Queenstown

Thursday 26.01:

We headed to Queenstown, and our first bathroom break was a highlight: the Exeloo toilet in Winton is super fancy: a voice announcing how much time you have in the toilet, elevator music playing in the background while the door (of course by pressing a button) is locked, toilet paper also only by pressing a button and the toilet flushes only automatically when you wash your hands! 😄

Our next stop: Garston - coincidentally but funny to know it is New Zealand's most inland city (the furthest away from all coasts). Unfortunately, it was raining until we were near Queenstown.

The road into Queenstown: simply insane what a view you have there! Simply beautiful!

However, the parking situation in Queenstown was a pain, Fritz eventually gave up with the traffic and left me to search. After 15 more minutes, I still couldn't find a parking space, so we went to the parking garage and paid $15 for the whole day. Ouch.

The city center is really beautiful, finally stone houses and an incredibly great view of the mountains from the harbor!

We met with a friend of Fritz (Ben) in the afternoon and chatted until we had to leave in the evening because we hardly had any food left.

The weather was rather mediocre the next day as well, we met with Sophia, an Argentine who Fritz knew from Tauranga and who had all her stuff stolen back then. She has been working in Queenstown for 3 months now and she says it reminds her of home.

After about an hour, we finally left, the city center was nice but way too crowded. So we set off towards Mount Cook.

We stopped at the Roaring Meg Falls (which actually have turquoise water, but due to the rain in the previous days, they were rather muddy gray).

We drove to the camping site 'Lindis Pass Historic Hotel' where there was a small ruin from the 19th century, which was supposed to be a hotel.