QUEENSTOWN · NEW ZEALAND
Deep lake, high country, no ordinary days.
Milford Sound day trips, Shotover jet boats, Walter Peak cruises and the Te Anau glowworm caves. Gibbston pinot, Arrowtown gold, and the high passes in between.
Only here
Only in this corner of New Zealand.
Helicopters and zip lines you can find in plenty of places. The jet boat, the coal-fired steamer and the glowworm caves belong to this lake and these mountains alone.
Invented here
The Jet Boat
The jet boat is a South Island invention. Bill Hamilton built the first workable impeller drive on these shallow braided rivers in the 1950s, and the Shotover Jet still runs the same canyon he tested it in. The spin at the canyon wall is the part everyone talks about afterwards.
- 1 Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in Queenstown
- 2 Queenstown: Shotover River and Kawarau River Jet Boat Ride
- 3 Queenstown: Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Experience
Coal and steam
Walter Peak by Steamer
The far shore of Lake Wakatipu is a working high-country sheep station you reach by steamship. The TSS Earnslaw has crossed the lake since 1912, the last coal-fired passenger steamer still working in the southern hemisphere. The sheepdog muster at the homestead is the bit you remember.
- 1 Queenstown: Walter Peak Gourmet BBQ & Lake Whakatipu Cruise
- 2 Walter Peak Gourmet BBQ Lunch & Queenstown Lake Cruise
- 3 Queenstown: Queenstown Lake Cruise and Walter Peak Farm Tour
Living light
Te Anau Glowworms
On the far side of Lake Te Anau, an underground river has hollowed out the Aurora Caves over twelve thousand years. Inside, the glowworm Arachnocampa luminosa, found only in New Zealand, lights the cave roof like a low galaxy. You drift through the last chamber in the dark, in silence.
- 1 Te Anau: Glowworm Caves Guided Tour
- 2 Award Winning Milford Sound Full Day Tour & Cruise from Te Anau
- 3 Te Anau Glow Worm Caves Tour
Start with the standout
The single most popular experience in Queenstown.
More travellers build a Queenstown trip around this one than anything else on the list.
The classics
Queenstown's Most Popular Tours
Milford Sound, the Shotover, Walter Peak and the Te Anau caves. The days most people come south for.
Where to begin
The experiences a Queenstown trip is built around.
Milford Sound, the lake cruises, the jet boats, the Gibbston wineries, the alpine flights and the glowworm caves. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big day trip
How to do Milford Sound.
It is 290km of mountain road each way, so the how matters as much as the if. Three ways to reach the fiord from Queenstown, depending on the time you have and the budget you bring.
Central Otago
Pinot noir at the 45th parallel.
Gibbston Valley sits in a glacier-cut gorge twenty minutes from town, the heart of the world’s southernmost pinot noir country. Cellar doors, long vineyard lunches and a wine cave dug into the rock, all strung along the Kawarau River between the vines and the gold-rush bridge.
Read the guide: the best wine tours near Queenstown →June to September
When the town turns alpine.
From June the peaks above the lake fill with snow. Coronet Peak and The Remarkables run their lifts minutes from the centre, the gondola opens onto a white skyline, and helicopters drop onto the snowfields for a morning on untracked powder.
See the winter experiences →The lake
Eighty kilometres of cold, clear water.
Lake Wakatipu runs eighty kilometres in a long dog-leg around the town, 380 metres deep and walled in by the Remarkables. Māori legend reads its slow rise and fall as the heartbeat of a sleeping giant. Cross it by coal-fired steamer, sail it at dusk, or open the throttle.
Cruises & boat trips →Lord of the Rings
The real Middle-earth is up the lake.
The valleys above Glenorchy, the beech forest at Paradise and the peaks around the lake stood in for Middle-earth through the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films. Guided trips run out to the real filming sites, with the props to prove you were there.
- 1 Lord of the Rings Scenic Half Day Tour from Queenstown
- 2 From Queenstown: Lord Of The Rings Tour to Glenorchy
- 3 Queenstown: 4WD Lord Of the Rings Tour Half-Day Tour
By adrenaline
Pick your day, by intensity.
Queenstown earns the "adventure capital" tag by answering every level. Slow when you want to slow down, fast when you want lift, and full free-fall when you want to find out.
Take it slow
Long lunches and lake time.Vineyard tours through Gibbston, gourmet cruises to Walter Peak, the day spent at water level.
Classic adventure
River speed and alpine air.The Shotover Jet through the canyon, scenic flights over the Remarkables, Milford by coach and cruise.
Maximum air
The long way down.Tandem skydives over the Wakatipu basin, paragliders off Coronet Peak, zip lines through the beech canopy.
The Shotover
Ninety kilometres an hour, inches off the rock.
The jet boat is a New Zealand invention, and the Shotover still runs the narrow rock canyon below the gorge at full speed, close enough to the walls to make you flinch, with the 360-degree spins the drivers are licensed to pull nowhere else. The Kawarau adds open-river speed and bigger water.
See all 23 jet boat rides →By place
The South Island, six ways.
Queenstown for the lake and the action. Milford Sound for the fiords. Wanaka over the pass. Te Anau for the glowworms. Glenorchy for the quiet end of the lake. Arrowtown for the autumn gold.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Helicopter if you want the peaks from above. Jet boat if you want the river fast. Cruise if you want the lake slow. Wine, walking, or open-air free-fall.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
Never been? Here is a long weekend that hits the essentials without a wasted hour.
Just added