Queenstown, a provincial town at the south of New Zealand, has a reputation as a sports destination with excellent outdoor activities. It is built on the banks of Lake Wakatipu, also reputed for its delightful cruises from a bygone era.

New Zealand’s south island cultivates a reputation for rugged, natural surroundings. This green and blue southern space is home to New-Zealand’s Alps, immense pastures with their grazing sheep, the deep, jagged fiords of Fjordland. In the midst of this stunningly picturesque landscape, the town of Queenstown has carved out an image for itself as a stylish, sporting town. For a number of years now, if you want to experience real thrills, you come here for white water rafting, paragliding, parachuting and bungee jumping. Queenstown, set on the banks of curving Lake Wakatipu, has made a speciality out of cruises from a bygone era, on board an authentic 1912 steamer, still stoked with coal by hand. It generally plies the lake, between the mountains, to Walter Peak High Country farm, a huge property with several thousand sheep… sheared in front of a watching public. The other main attraction is but a few kilometres from Queenstown. The village of Arrotown, created in the 1850s at the time of the gold rush, retains the atmosphere of a village from the ‘far west’, with its single street, its wooden shops and what is left of a Chinese quarter. Queenstown is the bridgehead for excursions to the far south and the fiords, and is also an excellent shopping destination. Large numbers of luxury boutiques put the finishing touches to the stylish image of a small, top-of-the-range, tourist capital.