Day 82: Queenstown, hiking Ben Lommond

I will be frank.  Queenstown is pretty awful.  It's awful in a way that I suspect Vail, or Steamboat Springs, or any mountain resort town is awful, but it has the unlucky distinction of being the ONLY mountain resort town in New Zealand of any size.  So it's really awful.  

The landscape is lovely, the lake is lovely, the hikes are lovely, but you are constantly surrounded by other tourists, and it all seems that they are the worst kind of tourist.  Lots of money, but not much to contribute, really.  

Our AirBnB was a good indicator of this.  Very expensive, but upon arrival it was instantly obvious that this was no-one's home, but rather an investment made by someone, and merely pitched as a home on AirBnb.  And at the price, it felt very much like we were being Nickel and Dimed on most everything.  Use too much WiFi, they charge you.  Use too much Toilet Paper, they charge you.  Don't clean up enough (even though they already charged a cleaning fee) they charge you.  You get the picture.   The view was good, but for the price, it better have been.

So Molly and I tried to get out of town a bit.  Fortunately, there was a great day walk to the top of the Ben Lommond, a local peak, and one of the highest in the area.  It starts with a section of trail just behind town.  You can get to the top by paying for the ski lift (at $40 round trip, a steal, I'm sure) and the trail was cut constantly with down hill mountain bike trails.  I guess if I were a downhiller, that would be awesome.  We just had to dodge bikers a lot.

But there were these cool chairs carved from stumps.

And finally, out of the forest, and away from the madding crowd, some open trail.  The middle peak, covered in clouds, is Ben Lommond, at roughly 1600 meters above Queenstown.

When they weren't obscured by clouds, the views were amazing.

Just in time for the top, the clouds started to part, and we got amazing views of the Southern Alps, and beyond them, just barely, the fjords.

A cool little pointer for finding the major mountain peaks.

A mountain parrot, called a Kea.

A quick view of Queenstown.

Another part of the "Disneyland of the Mountains" feel was the constant stream of people who paid $300 to paraglide from the top of the ridge.

The upper launching field for para gliders.

And the lower one.  More busy on this day.

The upper lift for para gliders and the mountain luge track.

Away they go!

Lavender everywhere made for a nice bit of natural loveliness.

Not the worst day, considering we expected it to be terrible like the actual town.  And we were rewarded with another great sunset over the lake and mountains.