After my trip through the Catlains I made my way to Queenstown and its suburb Frankton.

Personally, I didn’t like Queenstown that much. It is just an expensive tourist and party city extravaganza. So I was happy to leave the hostel after a few days to go to my HelpX hosts Mary and Fraser in Frankton.

While in Queenstown, I went up both Queen Hill and Bob’s Peak (following the Tiki Trail, not taking the Gondola), and most interestingly I went Bungy Jumping from the Kawarau Bridge, dipping into the river, which a few hundred metres further upstream has been used as River Anduin in The Lord of the Rings. Doing the Bungy Jump, was a quite extraordinary experience and despite the cost, I regret nothing! ;D

Mary and Fraser have been so kind and took me to there holiday home for a weekend in Manapouri, in the Fjordlands of New Zealand. And it was just amazingly beautiful. At that point I decided, that I will continue further north to the Nelson area, to come back to Manapouri in spring. Mary and Fraser offered to me, the possibility to stay there in their holiday home, for some work on there second property. Which I’m really looking forward to. Manapouri has some great walks to offer, including one of the Great Walks of New Zealand.

Fraser is also quite knowledgeable in general about good walks. He also proposed two beautiful walks to me, I did near Queenstown. For one, a walk from Arrowtown up to Big Hill and secondly the Wye Creek Track.

Otherwise, I helped Fraser renovating, cutting fire wood, garden work, that kind of stuff. In my spare time I did a lot of programming. Because I often misinterpreted the weather forecast to be much worse than it would actually be. So I missed some good opportunities for walks. But meh… It is how it is now.