New Zealand day 5

We woke up bright and early and ready to hit the road. We checked out of the hostel and started towards Queenstown. It was about a 5 hour drive. We stopped a few times for gas and toilets. Gas is ridiculous expensive here. To fill up a tank of a station wagon it costs about $70. It is just crazy.
The ride was beautiful. There were neverending lakes and moutains for miles. Some of the mountains still had snow on them. A lot of the mountains on the way down were a lot drier down this way. WE think it is because it gets so much snow but we're not sure. Still beautiful nonetheless.
Once we got to Queenstown we checked into our hostel and right away we booked river surfing, bungee jumping, and a cruise through milford sounds. Queenstown is right on a lake with mountains surrounding it from every direction. Some mountains are green, some are dry, and some have snow on it, depending on which direction you look. It is absolutely amazing. Kind of reminds me of Lake Tahoe. The water of the lake is crystal clear blue. I've never seen anything like it.
We took a walk around town and made our way up to the gondola. The gondola is super high. I can't even tell you how high it goes up, I will have to find out and write it later. Once you're up there you can see for miles and miles, well until you can't see passed the mountains. It is so beautiful. you can see the lake with boats zipping around, and a small area of houses, and more mountains of course. It's too beautiful to explain. I will have to post pictures when I get to my computer.
There was a wedding reception going on at the time. I couldn't imagine getting married up there. MAn those people must be rich!
At the very top of the gondola there is a paved luge that you can ride down. So you take another chair lift up another 800 meters, and you ride these little 3 wheeler cars down to the gondola. It was great fun! Took a minute to get used to but you can go as fast or as slow as you want and the course weaves around the mountain so it takes a little while to go down. The view was spectacular as you are going down as well. We learned later that more people get hurt doing this little luge, than they do river surfing, sky diving, bungee jumping, and everything else this little town has to offer. We had to laugh about that one because it's like go carts. some people do stupid things I guess.
So after that we walked around for literally 45 minutes, trying to find a restaraunt we were happy eating at. We just couldn't decided. WE decided on a pizza place and at some amzing pizza. We also tried a NEw Zealand beer called Tui which was not too exciting.
We came back to the hostel got dressed to go out and made our way down to the buffalo bar where we could get free beer with our hostel key card. We went with a bunch of people from the hostel and it was a lot of fun. After about 2 beers we were ready to go though because we had to be up super early. We headed back to the hostel and met two Australians that are from about 20 minutes south of Brisbane. So we ended up talking with them for about 1 hour and a half. They were great fun but we were ready for bed. So we headed back. We had to get ready for river surfing so we ended up going to bed about 2:30. REady to get up about 7 am. Fun times!