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Published: March 29th 2010
View From Our Window
Changing leaves and the first major snowfall of the season - the snow has since melted.Greetings everyone!! Highlights from the past couple of weeks in good ol' Queenstown include:
1. A bizarre combination of a severe thunderstorm and an earthquake. What is even stranger is that earthquakes are far more common here than thunderstorms! NZ gets over 100 earthquakes a year strong enough to be felt, but only a handful of lightning and thunder. To experience both of them at the same time is probably unheard of. Yet, that was our experience last week! We awoke around midnight to an ear-shattering clap of thunder and sat there watching the lightning for half the night, awed by how much we miss all the great thunderstorms back home. Finally we went back to sleep, only to be jolted awake at 4am to rattling windows and shaking walls. Figuring it was just another big clap of thunder, we didn't give it much thought and went back to sleep. The next day, though, the entire hotel was in a frenzy, everyone talking about how they'd been jostled awake at exactly 4am to their entire room rattling. Figuring we're on to something here, we check out the local earthquake activity website and sure enough, there was a 4.3 quake about
40 miles to the south of us!! It didn't do any damage, as most of the quakes here are small and the country is not populated or developed enough to worry about any major (or minor) damage. But still, we experienced our very first earthquake! I don't dare make light of it in view of all the horrific quakes they've had lately in Haiti, Chile, the Philippines, etc., but it was still an interesting experience I wanted to share with you guys.
2. Strolling through Queenstown Gardens, finally...the photos speak for themselves. The place is absolutely gorgeous!!
3. An impromptu 4-hour road trip to Gore (remember good ol' Gore?) to indulge in the one and only Pizza Hut. On a breakfast shift here with a Canadian girl named Tara, the conversation turned (as usual) to all the food we miss back home. Pizza Hut came up, and we asked if she'd been to the one in Gore. Tara was simply beside herself at the discovery that there is in fact at least one Pizza Hut in NZ (granted, two hours away)...but in the spirit of spontaneity, we finished our shift, climbed into the car, and drove 4 hours
round-trip to Gore for some Pizza Hut. Even Jeremy blew his gluten-free diet and suffered a stomachache so he could single-handedly chow down on an extra-large pepperoni pizza and garlic bread. We all had tears in our eyes, I believe, and it was a very happy and contented drive back to Queenstown. The funny thing is...last month at a local pizza joint, Jeremy and I split a medium gluten-free pizza for $31. Saturday night at Pizza Hut, we got two extra-large pizzas, garlic bread, and a 2-liter of Pepsi for $26. Go figure!
4. The arrival yesterday, at last, of our care package that our families so lovingly put together for us. Tears of joy were spilled as we pulled out Ruffles, Oreos, Kraft macaroni and cheese, marshmallow Peeps, and all sort of other goodies we've been missing (along with some boring but much-needed other stuff we can't get here, like motion sickness medication for me!). Thanks to our beloved parents (and everyone else who offered to send us stuff, there were quite a few of you and we appreciate it!!).
Aside from those terribly exciting events, it's been pretty quiet. We just received word that we will
NOT, in fact, be able to reside in the hotel during the busy winter season. This came as quite a shock to us, since there was no mention of a time constraint when we moved in. We have until June 15th to move out, so it's not like we have to do it tomorrow or anything, but still, we're rather upset by the whole thing. Rent is a fortune in Queenstown and I can only imagine what heating bills must be like in the winter (especially for us pathetic Floridians). And we pretty much made the commitment to stay in the area when we purchased our season ski/snowboard passes, so we definitely don't want to leave Queenstown. So we're up the air right now as to what exactly we're going to do. We're toying with the idea of working here through early May, then taking off to tour the North Island for a couple weeks (since we haven't been up there yet, except for our first few days in Auckland), and coming back to Queenstown in June to find work and accommodation for the winter season. But we'll see how it all works out. If we're getting kicked out of
the hotel, we definitely will not continue working here - one of the major perks of the job is the cheap and convenient accommodation, and if they take that away...well, let's just say there are MUCH better places we could be working than Rydges. It's been great for a couple of months to get us back on our feet, but neither of us will be too heart-broken if we find employment elsewhere.
So!! Tonight is our Memorial, and it's bizarre to think that we have the very first one anywhere in the world...we'll go to ours, come home, sleep, and be eating lunch tomorrow by the time you guys are getting dressed to go to yours! Funny world, huh?? Our plans for April include finally getting over to Milford Sound at some point, and attending the Autumn Leaves Festival just up the road in Arrowtown, so hopefully we will have some lovely photos and blogs for you next month! Hope all is well and you guys are surviving the end of your rough winter. It's still strange for us to think that our winter is just gearing up...autumn leaves in April, snowboarding in July...we're all sorts of upside-down down
here!!
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Paul Kaufman (from Brio)
non-member comment
The joy of your trip
I've enjoyed everyone of your travel blog entries - the stories and photos are excellent and I am soooooo jealous! Thank you for sharing! Paul