Snow all around Queenstown

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Queenstown is in a way the embassy of Australia in New Zealand... in a way means the beer way. It's one of the only places at least in the south island that you can actually go out in the night, there're plenty of pubs, clubs etc. On our first night here Marie and me stayed in a lousy hostel (Flaming Kiwi - highly NOT recommended) but found there a bunch of nice English guys so we had a good drinking night. The following day was a total chill out day, enjoying the nice weather although in the afternoon it got quite overcast, for the first time since I arrived to New Zealand. In fact, at night it rained and snowed on the mountains, so the next day the mountains around were even more beautiful, with heavier snow cap. (And we also moved to a nice hostel, this one is VERY recommended - Southern Laughter).
On Tuesday I spent half day trying to fix the zipper of my backpack. I got a piece of cloth stuck so hard in the zipper that it took me 2.5 hours to get it out, bit by bit. When I finally had it done I decided to drive to Arrowtown, a small town 20 km from Queenstown. I took the back road, which also leads to one of the ski areas around here, Coronet Peak. I climbed half way to the peak, but it was snowing and at some point everybody stopped to fit their snow chains. I decided to turn back there, not before I took some pictures to show that it is really winter here, in case you didn’t notice with all the blue sky pictures so far.
Arrowtown itself was cute and quiet (in the summer it was so unbelievably busy). I had lunch in a restaurant - a good shepherd’s pie, great for this kind of weather, and I wondered a bit between the shops. Back in Queenstown it was a quite night in the hostel, not daring to go out in such a freezing weather…

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Photos

Snow on the trees - looks like Christmas?
In the middle of August...