Queenstown

This town is so cool.  It's kind of nestled in the mountains, and there is a 360 degree view of them.  Also there is a lake with a foot path around it.  This morning I took a nice jog around it.  But then it started raining, and so I have done the following:

Bought another 2000 kilometers for Kiri's car ($56, it's like a tax, and you have to post it on the windshield.)  Got a haircut.  Bought my New Zealand sweater (so beautiful...Merino Wool, assymetrical zipper and from Untouched World, which comes highly recommended by Anna's sister Susi from Melbourne.  It was a tad pricey but I justified it because I have been eating nothing but cereal and ham sandwiches all week.)  Did my laundry.  Hung it on balcony, hoping it dries in all this rain.  Bought two movie tickets for this evening. 

A quick note on the hostel I am staying in.  It's brand new, called Nomads and is pretty clean.  I sprung an extra $4 for an ensuite room, meaning the bathroom and shower are in the room, and it's a 4-share, female only.  Last night I went to bed at 10pm and drank a half bottle of wine right out of the bottle, facebook'ed for an hour and then tried to fall asleep.  None of my dorm-mates were back at the room at that point.  Just as I did lights-out, the club next door started playing music, and I layed awake for hours listening to Miley Cyrus songs clubbed up.  I could feel the bass in my stomach.  And I had ear plugs in.  And then one of my dorm-mates came back to the room and she has a cold so she coughed for a while.  And then the other dorm-mates came back.  This all sort of happened between like 11pm and 4am I think.  Anyway I was irritated about the club next door, because I am staying here two nights.  So I was going to check out at 10am and go to a hostel up the road and ask for a refund for the second night.  Except I slept until noon.  So I'm stuck here another night.  It's completely filled with early 20s partyer-type people.  But it's very very clean and I must have gotten some sleep because I didn't wake up until noon.  So that was cool.  My dorm-mate with the cold also slept in and that made it hard for me to get up because I had to take a major dump and didn't want to have an audience so I had to wait for her to leave.  I ended up facebooking again until she left.  It was weird, like we didn't even say hi to each other or anything.  And then housekeeping kept coming in and we didn't talk to those people either.  Usually you at least say "good morning" or something...maybe she had to take a dump too and we had a 'wait for the other person to leave' war.  Well I won if that's the case.

But -- yesterday I had an awesome day!  I got up early and scheduled myself for the 9:35am half-day hike up the glacier.  We all got to borrow some boots (ew) and were issued a pair of cramp-ons, or spikey things that you belt onto your boots.  This makes it easier to climp up the ice.  I started the walk with a t-shirt and jacket.  We went into the valley and walked for about a half an hour next to the river of water that flows off the glacier.  Then it was time to enter the temperate rainforest.  Our guide recommeded stripping down to t-shirts because it's 800 steps to climb up up up up up the mountain to get to the ice.  I was so happy to be doing such an awesome workout.  And it was very hot.  Then it was time to put on my wool hat and mittens, jacket, and fleece, and the cramp-ons.  It was so cool to go from stony river path, to rainforest climb, to walking on the ice!  Every day their staff goes out onto the ice to hack away at it and create some steps for climbing.  I loved the glacier.  It was so beautiful.  When the sun hit it, it looked very blue. 

Here's another link to my photos so you can see the glacier:

Click here for glacier photos (photos 75 to 98)

Again, sorry about linking to photos.  I can't figure out how to fix that in blogger.

So tonight I am going to two movies I don't even want to see because I'm desperate to see a movie.  And it's raining.