Evening from Queenstown! Today was an exhausting day. It's 9:41 p.m. here on a Wednesday night. I woke up at 7 a.m. and could make out the silhouette of the Southern Alps from my awesome hotel room, so I took that as a good sign. Another day of good weather! That makes... about 3 in New Zealand total. And I started writing this journal entry twice already, and it keeps on losing my freaking text! That's a good waste of 30 minutes of internet time.
Today I walked the Hooker Valley walk from Mt Cook Village. It's clocked at 4 hours return, but because the path was especially slippery because of the frozen snow and ice, and because I kept pausing to take pictures every 20 feet, it took me about 5 hours total. It was freezing cold when I headed out. I waited to see first light from my hotel room, and then sped out on the trail. On the way there, this Japanese woman heading out on another path sped-walked past me, wearing basically a fashion jacket, boots - not hiking boots mind you, and a tiny purse. How are you supposed to fit your daypack first aid kid, water bottle, muesli bars, and maps like I was carrying in that?
The day was absolutely gorgeous; I couldn't have asked for better weather. It was cold, yeah, but in a good way since there was so much movement, it would have been too hot if it was warmer outside. I passed by enough people on the way there and back to feel safe (in case I slipped or something, which seemed pretty easy to do), but not enough to ruin the whole zen thing going on. I could pretty take a break most of the time, look around and see no one else and hear no one else around. I had to set a return time to start walking back since I wanted to be sure to catch my bus, but I gave myself an extra 15 minutes to reach the final end of the path at the glacier lake - past the Danger! Avalanche signs to basically reach the base of Mt Cook. Yeah! I made it all the way to the BASE of a snowy mountain. Sweet as!
When I walked back to the hotel I headed straight to the Alpine Restaurant for the buffet lunch because I was starving at this point. The dude kind of gave me some attitude when I said, "Table for 1," because he was like, "This is a buffet lunch that costs $38. Why don't you take a look and see if that's what you want... else you can go to the cafe upstairs." The freakin' museum cafe with pre-made sandwiches and cookies? I said, "Uh, BUFFET." (He wasn't a kiwi by his accent, so it's all good). The food wasn't THAT great, but it was filling enough and I managed to squeeze in 2 plates, a bisque soup and dessert while the NZ sun was burning me since I sat by right by the window in view of Aoraki.
Then I got on the bus to Queenstown. The coaches here are really nice, but I think it must drive the kiwis crazy to keep hearing the driver interrupt every few minutes with some kiwi anectdotes. Even I've heard a lot of these stories already. I half-slept on the 4-hour bus ride. We kept stopping at cafes and fruit stalls too, the same ones I stopped at 5 years ago. I appreciated that they were still there, but I was so tired at this point walked through those places in a daze.
Got to Queenstown at nighttime. The city is surprisingly kind of dead. Mt Cook was dead too because apparently people don't want to climb around a snowy mountain in winter. There's a lot of skifields here, but right now is the weird limbo period where it's too cold to do other outdoor activities, but not cold enough to snowboard. I ate at this Thai restaurant for dinner, where the waitress paid particular attention to me - because I was by myself or something, but she kept refilling my teacup, my teapot, and she also kept nudging the radiator closer to me. It was kind of funny to sit there in that semi-romantic environment, with instrumental variations of "Everything I do, I do it for you" and "I will always love you" playing in the restaurant. I've been eating out by myself most of the time here, and I know sometimes it can get weird, but I reached a point a while ago where I stopped caring about the awkwardness of it.
Hopefully the weather continues to be good. There were such clear skies last night, I stood outside my hotel for about half an hour watching the night sky. It was pretty cool because as your eyes adjust to the darkness, more and more stars progressively start showing up. And I could see the Milky Way band and so many thousands of stars. I got all nerdy excited. It's probably the best thing I've seen here, and I can't take a picture of it!
Tomorrow I am doing the AJ Hackett Bungy Ledge Swing in the morning, which is exactly what I did last time too, but I wanted to go up on the gondola and do some luging too and take pictures of the Remarkables mountain range and I have less than 24 hours here, so it was the best option. I'm curious to see if it's going to be as scary as last time. I'm also filming myself this time, so I can see how ridiculous I look when I do it. Then tomorrow after that, I am heading back to good old Dunedin, which still has school going on, so it shouldn't be dead (when students aren't in town, the city is seriously depressing). I'll be staying at On Top Backpackers.
Now I'd better sign off because I need a good night's rest and unfortunately I'm still sick. I'm crossing my fingers for the flight back because I don't want any suspicious eyes on me!
