Queenstown

Queenstown sits on a lake shaped like a lightning bolt under a mountain range named, with Victorian understatement, The Remarkables — and it has spent forty years converting that geography into adrenaline. Commercial bungee jumping was invented here, at Kawarau Bridge in 1988, and the town has since assembled the southern hemisphere's densest menu of jets, swings, trails and slopes, all garnished with wineries, because New Zealand believes recovery matters.

The traveller leaps — or watches others leap, which at Kawarau is theater with a river floor —; rides the Shotover jet boats centimeter-close to canyon walls; sails the lake on the TSS Earnslaw, a coal-fired steamship serving since 1912; rides the gondola for the luge and the long view; eats the Fergburger of legend at whatever hour the line allows; and drives the road that ranks among Earth's finest, four hours through beech forest and avalanche country to Milford Sound's fiord.

The Guide's practical counsel: book the marquee thrills and Milford ahead in high summer and ski season, when the town runs full —; layers beat forecasts in these mountains, where four seasons audition daily; Arrowtown's gold-rush lanes and the Gibbston valley's pinot make the gentlest afternoons; the shoulder months — April's gold poplars, October's snow-melt — are the connoisseur's Queenstown; and the sandflies of the fiord road are best answered with repellent and philosophy.