Queenstown, NZ – Panorama
Last weekend my wife and I were in Queenstown, New Zealand for a friend of mine’s wedding. It was a beautiful wedding, in a spectacular part of the world.
The vistas were phenomenal. Back in August last year when my father and I were in South Africa I was trying out a new panorama technique, and this trip also gave me some time to try this technique again.
In order for everyone to enjoy these massive photos (some are about 100MB in jpg format), so I had to massively reduce the file sizes. Because these photos are also so wide, this blog is now using a new plugin which allows you to hover your mouse over the image, and use your mouse to guide your way around the image.
If you are staying in Queenstown, and somehow you haven’t seen the view on the way over in the taxi from the airport, the photo below is the first thing you’ll see walking up to the water.
The protected bay harbors the TSS Earsnlaw, now more than 110 years old and still sailing between 3-4 times a day, depending on the time of the year. It is also the place to head to, to start your para sailing, jet boating, and other water sports.
After searching your view, it doesn’t take long to find the gondolas traveling up Ben Lomond, the mountain nuzzling right up to Queenstown’s East. This is probably one of the biggest, and easiest tourist attractions in Queenstown, good for the whole family. Once at the top, and out of the gift store, you can either walk out to the viewing platform, or keep going up for a Luge ride down a couple of tracks. This next photo is the highest point I could get to, on top of the Luge track looking down. The Remarkables in the background and Lake Wakatipu.
The last photo is from the viewing deck. Not in this photo, but looking out over the railing you can easily see random crazy people diving off the bungy platform. I wanted to take a nice photo of the Remarkables (below), as whether you fly or drive into Queenstown they are quite an imposing mountain range. Some Lord of the Rings fans might recognize these mountains, but will say that they are too short… Queenstown’s biggest joke is that these mountains are also unofficially called, “The Extendables”.
I hope you enjoy these. Panoramas will now become a more regular feature on this website. There might be one more ‘Safari Dust’ blog coming soon.
Enjoy, Stuart.
