Ziptrek Ecotours Queenstown

In keeping with the eco-friendly spirit of things, I opted to walk up to Bobs Peak, the spot near SkyLine overlooking Queenstown where the Ziptrek Ecotours starts and finishes from. It took me a cool 50 minutes, and it's definitely a gruelling track in places, but also well worth it. If you don't fancy the walk up to Ziptrek Ecotours then the Gondola itself is in fact hydro powered, so don't feel too guilty if you opt for the more relaxing way up, you're not hurting Mother Earth too badly.

Ziptrek Ecotours is a relatively new company to Queenstown, having only opened in November 2009. The company itself has been operating for a number of years in Whistler Canada, and is a well established award winning eco-tourism business, famed for delivering an awareness of the natural environment along with a fair whack of adrenaline.

The tour itself took a good two hours from start to finish, which includes 4 incredible Zip-lines suspended 30 meters above the forest floor. You can reach speeds of up to 50 kph as you hurtle through the pine trees and if you try it upside down and back to front the rush is super intense. Our Ziptrek guides, Jags and Morgan, gave us an interesting and at times jovial overview into the ecological stance of the company along the way, and at times giving some poignant, hard hitting facts on the demise of our beautiful planet.

All in all this was definitely a fantastic trip to partake in, and by March 2010 there will be 2 more longer faster and steeper zip-lines to get your adrenaline fuelled teeth into. A big thanks to the guides at Ziptrek Ecotours for an adrenaline packed and informative day!

Franko

***Update - there are now two Ziptrek Ecotours - make sure you try the Kea Tour!