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The weather is perfect again! Glorious blue skies, sunshine and spectacular blues and yet a black cloud of depression is hanging over my shoulder. Why? It's my last day in Queenstown, and penultimte day in New Zealand, a country that really should be listed as one of the seven wonders of the world.
It's a late start. Vic James, Red Carpet tour manager, has kindly agreed to stow my luggage in his car at check-put time of 11am and give me a lift to the airport at 4pm. After being woken at 3am (why is it that no matter how often you tell UK recruitment agencies 'I'm out of the country - please don't try and call me before December 13th' you just know they'll 'forget' at the crucial time!) I have a lie in and only start to explore the town dead on the dot of 11am when I've checked out.
		Perhaps foolishly, I've not booked on any trips our adrenaline rides, fearing a missed flight after too many bad experiences of the Kiwi perception of time. This gives me a chance to explore the 'town' a little more, and in particular the cable car ride which a couple of fellow travellers have enthused about. The cable car ride is quite expensive (about £8 - returns only), but well worth it and turns out to be a bit of an adrenaline ride in its own right, because it is steep as in 'almost vertical' steep! As I approach the car a loud alarm goes off and the whole thing stops. Yikes! It turns out this is 'business as usual' so that a palette of goods for the restaurant at the top of the mountain can be loaded up! A photographer snaps my picture as I wait for the car to be loaded onto the cable. Later when I get back down I find the photo is waiting in one of the cheesiest souveniers I've ever seen in my life (and that's including my trip to Blackpool!) - it's so bad and so tacky it begs to be purchased, and includes a really nasty plastic pen too with a set of postcard replicants you can send to your friends (I don't hate any of them enough to send them one!) The ride up is breathtaking, and the restaurant at the top turns out to be a real find. The glass-fronted views of Queenstown are spectacular and where, being a tourist attraction, one might expect poor food and rip off prices, I'm pleasantly surprised to find a five course buffet meal (eat as much as you like) for just NZ$31 - not much more than a tenner! The food is excellent and service is good too. If you find yourself in Queenstown I can't think of a better venue for lunch at these prices! After dinner a young girl asks if she can share my car. She has just done some hang-gliding and admits to doing her first skydive (a tandem) the previous afternoon. She is, I suspect, fairly typical of the average tourist in Queenstown, admitting "I'd never have thought of doing a skydive - I thought it was for mad people. But when so many thousands are doing it around you, you think 'Well I might as well give it a go'. And it was fantastic! I want to do it again. I figured after that hang gliding would be OK, and it was great. I can't wait to do it again" I grab a beer at one of the bars along the lake, admiring the view and trying hard not to think about my impending departure (failing miserably). Life really doesn't get much better than this, and I can't believe how incredibly lucky I've been with the weather. Friends of course have all told me 3 weeks won't be enough, but I'd been worried I might get bored in New Zealand with not much to do except look at scenery. How wrong I was! I start dreaming of a return visit, under my own steam rather than as part of a coach trip, but with 6-12 weeks to explore. Maybe in a couple of years if I can get work when I return to the UK. I meet several of my fellow tour members at the airport, all moving on to differing destinations. It would be foolish to pretend there haven't been teething problems on this Red Carpet tour ('peaks and troughs' as one of the most pleased couples diplomatically put it), but really they are nothing to put anybody off. If you're a fan of the movies and want access to the sites that only Red Carpet can provide I have no hesitation in recommending them - particularly since I think the few problems I've seen have been down to sheer weight of numbers, which isn't something that's likely to be a problem in future with the premieres all now out of the way. I arrive at my hotel in Auckland to find incredible humidity and overcast skies. The holiday is already starting to feel like it's over. My hotel has upgraded me to an appartment which includes broadband Internet access and ensures I can get my last weblog, as actually written in New Zealand (December 10th's), up online. Tomorrow I have a quiet day before my flight back home, meeting up with an online friend Jacqui, who I met in person for the first time just after arriving here. Jacqui is going to make sure I don't bottle out of doing the 'wire bungee' jump from the top of Auckland's most famous landmark - the Sky Tower - something I had contemplated doing a couple of weeks ago, but bottled out of! Back to Day 17 report Forward to Day 19 report
Stay tuned for future reports (indicated by a photo appearing in the main Itinerary calendar)

Email: ian@iansmith.co.uk