So my much anticipated helicopter tour was unavailable this morning. Sighs. Oh well, I moved on to the next option: paragliding! I went up the gondola this morning to catch the 10:00am flight. It was extremely cloudy and I was worried that I wouldn't see a thing during the flight. Thankfully, the lady at reception said to wait til the clouds cleared. When they did, I took off the mountain with my instructor Dean. It didn't hurt that he was younger, kind of cute, and looked a little like Owen Wilson, but better. It was a ~40 min ride and very pleasant. I kept bombarding him with questions about the landscape and paragliding in general. God, I'm such a dork, but I got photos and a video as proof! After that, I still had some time before my LOTR tour, so I went to the Bird and Wildlife Park right next to the Skyline. There I got to see KIWI BIRDS. They are largely nocturnal, so they were housed in the dark with the red light. They were so incredibly cute, especially when they ran and hopped. It looked like they were going to keel over any second since their little flightless bodies would bend over as they moved. Later, I went on the LOTR tour. My guide was George, a girl, and a cute young couple rode with us. Let me rant a little about the cute couples I've seen in Queenstown. It's always the guy that is extremely attractive and the girl not so much. And I'm like: why. Anyways, George was very knowledgeable and had a great sense of humor. She told us the legend of Lake Wakatipu, and about how possums are speed bumps in NZ (a roadkill possum was called a squashum). She said that one of the guides was chosen to be an elf in a battle scene and his face was visible in the movie. There had been two Korean girls who went on the tour previously with him and they almost got into a fist fight over who would sit next to him. They ended up both sitting next to him and staring at him the whole time. Too bad we didn't get to meet this famous guide. She showed us exactly where scenes from movies like LOTR, The Water Horse, Wolverine, and Narnia were shot. The Hobbit was shooting in the area just a few weeks ago. It was very cool. She also had props like the hobbit cloaks and swords for us to do some role playing and reenacting scenes from the movie. It was great.
For dinner, I went to Kappa, a Japanese restaurant recommended by George. I ordered their combination udon, which was very good. I was confused when I got to the shop at first since their closed sign was up, yet after closely studying their hours, I found out that they actually closed at 10pm. Perhaps they didn't want many customers at the time. Very clever. Only very determined and hungry customers like me were allowed to go in and eat. I have an early start tomorrow morning with a coach and cruise tour to Milford Sound that I'm really excited about. It's amazing how many awesome things I'm doing each day here in New Zealand. It is definitely the ultimate vacation. I don't think I'll have to chance to do something like this in a long long time. My global gossip minutes are running out, so it'll probably be a while till my next update.
So my much anticipated helicopter tour was unavailable this morning. Sighs. Oh well, I moved on to the next option: paragliding! I went up the gondola this morning to catch the 10:00am flight. It was extremely cloudy and I was worried that I wouldn't see a thing during the flight. Thankfully, the lady at reception said to wait til the clouds cleared. When they did, I took off the mountain with my instructor Dean. It didn't hurt that he was younger, kind of cute, and looked a little like Owen Wilson, but better. It was a ~40 min ride and very pleasant. I kept bombarding him with questions about the landscape and paragliding in general. God, I'm such a dork, but I got photos and a video as proof! After that, I still had some time before my LOTR tour, so I went to the Bird and Wildlife Park right next to the Skyline. There I got to see KIWI BIRDS. They are largely nocturnal, so they were housed in the dark with the red light. They were so incredibly cute, especially when they ran and hopped. It looked like they were going to keel over any second since their little flightless bodies would bend over as they moved. Later, I went on the LOTR tour. My guide was George, a girl, and a cute young couple rode with us. Let me rant a little about the cute couples I've seen in Queenstown. It's always the guy that is extremely attractive and the girl not so much. And I'm like: why. Anyways, George was very knowledgeable and had a great sense of humor. She told us the legend of Lake Wakatipu, and about how possums are speed bumps in NZ (a roadkill possum was called a squashum). She said that one of the guides was chosen to be an elf in a battle scene and his face was visible in the movie. There had been two Korean girls who went on the tour previously with him and they almost got into a fist fight over who would sit next to him. They ended up both sitting next to him and staring at him the whole time. Too bad we didn't get to meet this famous guide. She showed us exactly where scenes from movies like LOTR, The Water Horse, Wolverine, and Narnia were shot. The Hobbit was shooting in the area just a few weeks ago. It was very cool. She also had props like the hobbit cloaks and swords for us to do some role playing and reenacting scenes from the movie. It was great. 
For dinner, I went to Kappa, a Japanese restaurant recommended by George. I ordered their combination udon, which was very good. I was confused when I got to the shop at first since their closed sign was up, yet after closely studying their hours, I found out that they actually closed at 10pm. Perhaps they didn't want many customers at the time. Very clever. Only very determined and hungry customers like me were allowed to go in and eat. I have an early start tomorrow morning with a coach and cruise tour to Milford Sound that I'm really excited about. It's amazing how many awesome things I'm doing each day here in New Zealand. It is definitely the ultimate vacation. I don't think I'll have to chance to do something like this in a long long time. My global gossip minutes are running out, so it'll probably be a while till my next update.
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