Goodbye Australia, Welcome New Zealand!

Sunset at Byron Bay, Australia

Hi folks. As you may have gathered, this photo blog is waaaay behind. With my working and travelling in Australia I found it hard to find the time and fast enough Wi-Fi to keep it up. So, I’ve decided to change the format so I can update it more regularly. I’m going to experiment with some different styles of blog post and see what I think works best.

As the blog was using images from over a year ago, I have decided to start again in the present!

So – I arrived in New Zealand two days ago and flew from Auckland to Queenstown in the south island – adventure capital of the world! It’s been snowing, a bit weird as I haven’t seen snow falling for over two years! It’s coooold (I am acclimatised to Asian and Australian summers) and I just bought a new beany (a hat for cool people). It is red as I am so passionate and of course sexy and it goes so well with my very uncool Kathmandu jacket.

The skylift vanishes into the clouds

Queenstown is on a big lake where they do powerboating and Extreeeeeeeme stuff like that. Most people here are on holiday to ski/board and are excited about the snow as there hasn’t been much lately, it’s just the start of winter here. The town is very commercialised and reminds me of the ski towns in France I’ve been to.

I am here for a few more days then I will have to decide whether to stay and try and find work/accommodation – everything is booked out – or scoot off to nearby Wanaka (very quiet but beautiful) or over to Christchurch where there is plenty of work, but the town isn’t so good to live in (mainly due to it being flattened from the earthquake a few years ago!). I fear if I work here I will save no money as I will want to snowboard and party…

The cloud has been low so there isn’t much to see, but when I flew in yesterday we were surrounded by big snow-topped mountains. The weather hasn’t stopped some of the lake activities though, here’s a close-up of the lake. Maybe I’ll take you back to Asia next post!