Day of Rest

  Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand
Monday, January 5, 2009

After a whirlwind tour of the island thus far, it was nice to finally have a day to settle in and just hang out in one place for a while.

At the Club

The weather on this day was so-so- kind of overcast, and most of my time in NZ, I've had to wear pants, and sometimes a fleece.

Teapot Time

It also rains here an incredible amount, though not really today.  I just spent most of this day hanging out.  After sleeping in a bit, I went and did some internet stuff, walked around the town and got some lunch.  Queenstown is a really beautiful city, situated on Lake Wakatipu.  Like Wanaka, you can tell it is rapidly growing.  Most of the buildings look new and there are cranes and signs for real estate everywhere, at pretty high prices.  Also of note is that New Zealand in general is a pretty expensive place, though not as bad as Sydney.  The U.S. dollar against the Kiwi dollar is pretty strong, with the Kiwi being worth about 57 cents on the dollar.  But everything is priced accordingly, so a t-shirt might be $45 or a sandwich might be $18.  Not many deals to be found here, although drinks were not too badly priced. 

Like I said, Queenstown is a nice town with a roughly 5 block by 5 block downtown full of shops, restaurants, bars, and lots of adventure tourism related places. 

Downtown Queenstown

  You can't look anywhere without seeing an ad for a jet boat ride or a Lord of the Rings tour into inner Mordor.  I'm not a super-adventurous guy, so I decided against doing any of these types of activities since they were expensive, and very short.  Plus, I was taking a trip to Milford Sound the next day, so that was enough for me. 
For dinner that night, I went with the crew from my bus to a place called Fergburger, which is a Queenstown legend.  

My Fergburger

I actually ran into some Chicagoans in there when I went (which I knew from their Cubs hats).  Fergburger has these ginormous hamburgers for pretty cheap prices.  I got the Big Al, which is a massive burger topped with bacon, bbq and cheese and all the usual trimmings.  With fries, it amounted to enough food for about 3.  A couple from California saw us eating them out in a park and took a picture of us all chowing down on these massive things.  

Fergburger

I took it pretty easy that night since I had to get up at 6 am for my bus to Milford Sound, which I set up that day at a cost of $143 Kiwi, so I didn't want to miss my bus.  I went to sleep reading my book on the early years of Saturday Night Live, which is a great read if you ever are looking for a new book.