Dec. 31, 2005 - Jan. 1, 2006

Invercargill to Queenstown to Te Anau

My first thoughts of the New Year were: 2006's weather is crap.

One day, 2005 is ending in beautiful fashion. The weather was outstanding as we made our way north and into the mountains to Queenstown, the tourist capital of New Zealand.
The townhugs the shores of Lake Wakatipu underneath the vertical rock walls of the Remarkables mountain chain. Like mountain resort towns everywhere, Queenstown is not a place for people to live. It is a place for people to spend money. The outer-most areas of town consist of ostentatious homes or huge-windowed condos. Slightly closer to the center are luxury hotels, which give way to trendy shops, restaurants, bars and clubs. In the midst of it all are advertisements and booking desks for just about any adventure activity you'd care to spend money on - skydiving, jet-boating, parasailing, bungy jumping, bungy jumping from much higher up, fly-by-wire, luging, plane tours, plane flying, whatever.
On New Year's Eve, also in the midst of it all were about 10,000 tourists booking out almost all the accommodation. However, the town or the local rugby club or someone graciously allows people to set up a tent on the local rugby field for a price. We had a tent, we had a place to stay. We walked around in brilliant sunshine, took a gondola to an peak above town, watched some cricket, and then settled in for midnight fireworks.

Waking up on New Year's Day, the sunshine was gone, replaced by grey clouds and drizzling rain. We packed up and headed west, bound for Fiordland.