From Auckland we took a flight directly to Queenstown, which is a small town but the capital of activities on south island. Queenstown greeted us with freezing shower while we tried to find the rental car – by the time we found it we were soaked. Luckily we could get warm in our cozy hostel that had a little twist – it was called a pod hostel, which basically meant dorms with double beds with curtains. They also served complimentary veggie soup in the evening, so convenient!

We both started and ended our South Island adventure in Queenstown. It is pretty touristy but has this appeal of a small mountain town. It is located by the lake Wakatipu and surrounded with mountains full of walking and MTB tracks. We were lucky to visit it in spring while the mountains still had their dramatic snow crowns – already during the two weeks we were travelling elsewhere on the South Island a lot of snow melted on the mountains leaving them more bare looking. It was also significantly warmer when we came back, summer (and ice cream) came quickly! 

Before leaving Queenstown we decided to do a couple of walks – a shorter evening walk, Mt Crichton Loop track, and a whole day Ben Lomond summit. Mt Crichton walk was a little uneventful, since the evening was misty and there was no way to appreciate surrounding mountains. However, we found a so called Sam’s hut – a tiny hut that had been standing there for almost a century, a little piece from the mining history.

When we left to Ben Lomond the next day, we didn’t really know much about it, but it turned to be definitely one of the best days of our trip! It had it all – freezing wind, slippery mud and blinding snow, but most importantly it had such rewarding views! Ville accidentally gave the mountain a new name – Belle Mont instead of Ben Lomond, and it suited it well.

We started at the bottom and climbed first the One mile track to get to Ben Lomond summit track. Some people come up with gondola to save a little bit less then an hour of walk, but we wanted to do the whole thing. One mile track was a really nice forest track that ended with a view on Ben Lomond – still covered with snow that looked like icing sugar.

Next part was less steep but looked beautiful, and at some point snow started appearing here and there. Slowly the track got more and more muddy with melted snow and soon resembled a tiny creek.

This continued to so called Ben Lomond saddle. After getting a little above that point you could not see only the gorgeous views over lake Wakatipu and surrounding mountains (first picture) but also the mountains behind Ben Lomond. And there are a lot of them, sugary caps as far as you can see. By climbing all the way to the summit (1748m), there is an extraordinary 360° view that is really worth all the effort of getting there.

When we started our descent we were lucky to see a little bit of kea, the mountain parrot native to the area. We only saw its clumsy flight, but even that was awesome.