Queenstown on the Cheap, Queenstown, New Zealand (B)

Queenstown and adventure go hand in hand. From skydiving to high-powered jet boats, bungy jumps and paragliding, there's no shortage of expensive things to do. This is not a budget traveler's paradise, but there are work-arounds. 

Nestled by Lake Wakatipu and The Remarkables mountain range, Queenstown also has an airport. If it weren't for that, I might have felt a little land-locked. From Wanaka, it's a 1 1/2 hour drive, unless you take a bus, and then it's best to stop counting down the hours and just enjoy the scenery. 

I chose to stay slightly out of the city at Bumbles Backpackers, which proved to be another good accommodation choice. All views faced the lake, and it was slightly out of the bustling center.

Bungy jumps are the thing to do here and have been happening for hundreds, possibly thousands of years in NZ, Inevitably, the first stop into Queenstown was at A.J. Hackett's first commercial bungy operation (starting in 1988) on the Kawarau Bridge. If you're going to jump head-first towards a river, I'd definitely do it here. Instead, I just watched from the secure platform on land, knowing I would need to brave-up for the Nevis Bungy Swing looming in my future. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).