Most first-time visitors to New Zealand’s South Island put Queenstown on the itinerary without much deliberation. It’s the world’s adventure capital – a title and a reputation deservedly earned and as such one of the headline ‘must-visit’ destinations in New Zealand.

Most people will have heard of Queenstown even if they can’t tell you where it is in New Zealand, but once they know its tiny airport welcomes international flights from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast as well as domestic shifts it becomes the default answer when anyone asks where to base themselves in the Southern Lakes.

That’s not wrong, but Wānaka sits 45-minutes away and travellers who find their way there tend to stop asking whether they made the right call fairly quickly.

Queenstown: where to start

Just to put the adventure capital label into perspective: bungy jumping was invented here. AJ Hackett’s original

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