Today was a nice easy drive of about 170 kilometers. It rained in the night and was drizzly for half the drive today. We left for Queenstown at around 10:00, but first I took a hair selfie. I've given up, no one has travel sized mousse to tame this beast, and I am too cheap to buy full-sized and leave behind what I don't use.
We drove right through to Kingston at the south end of Lake Wakatipu. We discovered that today is Waitangi Day, which is a national holiday here commemorating the signing of the treaty between the British and Maori chiefs in 1840. There was a sign on the door of the cafe we stopped at saying a 20% surcharge would be added on to all purchases since they had to pay their staff extra to work today. I asked if all places add that surcharge on holidays and was told that a lot do. The minimum wage here is very high at $23.15, but stat holiday pay is just a cost of doing business in Canada. I don't think raising prices for one day on every stat would go over very well at home.
I'm going to take a moment here to comment on the large amount of roadkill we have witnessed everywhere we've been. Apparently the possums come out at night and try to cross the roads in the dark, quite unsuccessfully. Possums were introduced to New Zealand for their fur. They have multiplied exponentially and kill large numbers of birds, up to 26 million per year. No one likes them so they don't try to avoid them on the road apparently.
The old railway station at Kingston.
Our room for two nights is like a small condo, very roomy and comfortable. I wish we were here for a week, it would make a good base from which to explore the area.
The view from our patio.
We walked into town, about 3 blocks away. Queenstown is built on a hill as you can see in the above photo. It reminds me a bit of Whistler, lots of tourists, pedestrian-only streets, the first McDonalds and Starbucks we've seen since we've been here, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Hugo Boss, souvenir stores galore, along with every kind of food you can imagine, buskers and souvenir stalls on the lakeside walk. Very overwhelming but cool at the same time.
A real mix of old and new.
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