Best Queenstown scenic drives South Island New Zealand
Learn which scenic drives around Queenstown are the ones worthwhile doing and which offer spectacular scenery and when.
There are just a few towns around Queenstown (as you can see from the image shown below), so not surprisingly, there aren’t many places to drive to from Queenstown.
However, this article lists a few scenic drives around Queenstown that offer quite impressive scenery, so are worth your time.
Any drive around Lake Wakatipu can be considered impressive. At the top of the list of such scenic drives is the drive from Queenstown to Glenorchy. It offers impressive lake and mountain views while you are driving on the road.
Of course you can also stop alongside the road at several places to relax at the lake or do a lakeside walk such as the Bob’s Cove walk.
And depending on the season in which you do this Queenstown scenic drive, you may get to see snow on the mountains; try winter or spring for the greatest chance of seeing snow on the mountains around Queenstown.
From Glenorchy, you can drive further North towards Paradise and the Routeburn track and stop at the Dart River bridge to take in more mountain views well-known from the Lord of the Rings.
The scenic drive back from Glenorchy to Queenstown is as impressive as the drive from Queenstown to Glenorchy, so take your time when driving back.
The second drive along Lake Wakatipu with impressive lake and mountain views is the drive from Queenstown to Kingston, which lies South of Queenstown. Both the Queenstown to Glenorchy and Queenstown to Kingston drives should take you less than an hour to complete.
The last scenic drive I would recommend with impressive scenic views is the drive down Crown Range. You can get to this drive by driving from Queenstown towards Cardrona and when you reach at the top of the Crown Range, drive back down.
The drive down Crown Range can be done during any time of the year, but you should pick a clear and sunny day, so that you can get nice views of mountains, Lake Wakatipu, and the Kawarau River from above. I particularly like doing this drive in autumn and in winter.
While you can drive to Cardrona and all the way to Wanaka after you reach the top of the Crown Range, the scenery is not that impressive. Cardrona lies in a valley and all you will see are trees, unless you drive up to the Cardrona ski field, in which case you will get impressive mountain views.
The one exception to this is if you are driving from Queenstown to Wanaka via Cardrona or vice versa during autumn in New Zealand, since this is a good road to admire the yellow autumn foliage on trees.
You may have noticed that I left out two towns: Arrowtown and Cromwell. While the drive to either of these two towns is not that spectacular when you are sitting in a car, you can make a couple of stops and for example enjoy the impressive fall foliage in Arrowtown during autumn, stop at Lake Hayes near Arrowtown, or stop at a location along the road such as the Roaring Meg on your way from Queenstown to Cromwell.
Filed under Scenic Drives
Copyright: This article may not be used on web sites (whether personal or otherwise), copied, disseminated, altered, printed, published, broadcasted, or reproduced in any way without an expressed written consent of the owner of NewZealandTravelInsider.com. Copyright for this article is non-transferrable and remains with the author. Read our full copyright notice.