Flying into Queenstown is a cool experience in itself, the approach is between mountains and when you land you get to take stairs down to the tarmac and walk into the airport which is one of my favorite airplane experiences. It makes me feel very fancy.

We spent our first night in a hostel with a real 0-60 shower. The trick was to keep turning the knob back and forth and only let the water touch you in the transition. But we did find what would become our home base when we were in Queenstown (which was pretty frequent as we transitioned around locations), Smiths Craft Beer House. They have an amazing craft beer selection, pool, and free wifi, very important when you don’t get any kind of international phone plan.

In the morning we headed back to the airport to pick up our rental campervan, and immediately headed out to some wineries on the Kawarau gorge. Now wineries might not seem in theme for a hiking blog, but the views were amazing.

Our next Vineyard was Chard Farms, and on the road there is also the site of the Pillars of the Kings from the end of the Fellowship of the Ring.

We picked up a couple of bottles of wine, one of which was recommended to be eaten with spicy green curry, so obviously we picked up some green curry and then headed to our campground, 12 Mile Delta. At this point I would like to recommend that if you are driving a campervan for the first time, trying to find and then park in a campsite after wine tasting all day….don’t wait until it’s dark out! But we did it in just a few tries, and although we didn’t know how special the campground was, in the morning we were stunned.

All of the rest of the pictures are just from walking around the campground. And of course of our Britz van…