Arriving in Middle Earth
Trip Start
Dec 16, 2006
1
72
93
Trip End
Ongoing
Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
I was soon to learn that poor Stuggy had suffered through a week of hostels with unheated rooms! Bizarrely, a lot of homes around here don't have central heating..if you can even imagine what that must be like. Mainly to do with not having reticulated gas (we are seriously in the middle of nowhere here), so no GFCH, most houses will have a heat pump (useless), underfloor heating (jaw-droppingly expensive) or an open fire (rosy-mantic, but totally impractical!) Luckily for me, Ben and Elly had sorted us out with a room in the motel they were staying at, which was cheaper than the hostel, had cable tv and ensuite bathroom, and roasty toasty heating!
So began again the seemingly endless process of house and job hunting. Again, luckily for me (turning up last certainly seemed to help!) we were only there for a week before we found, and moved into, our palace on the hill. When I say hill, I mean HILL, when we first went to see the house, me and Elly (before we got there) swore we wouldn't live there, as it was a horrendous walk up lots of steep hills to get there. But when we saw the house, and the fabulous views.....(picture windows looking over the lake and Remarkables) we changed our mind. The place was un-furnished, but luckily for us, Alan, the boys boss (Ben and Stug were working for a local handyman) sorted us out with sofas, beds, and other assorted items (including tv, dvd, stereo!) from a house clearnace they were doing. The rest we picked up from a garage sale from a departing couple....we literally bought their entire house contents (and for a measly 300 dollars too!)
It all kept falling into place, as within a week, I'd also started work for a small engineering consultancy in town, handy!
So now, we've been here 4 months, and the novelty has certainly not worn off! There are a million things about this town that make it the little paradise that it is...snowy mountains and snowboarding, beautiful lake and beaches, the most dramatic walk to work I've ever had (panoramic doesn't do it justice), the town centre with it's cute cafes and shops, the huge amount of bars that are here, the holiday atmosphere, the way all the people who live here know each other, and we're getting to know them too, the great people that I work with, our wonderful house, the great nightlife even though it's such a small place, how friendly everyone is, how cheap the taxi's are (!), fergburger, the promise of a sunshiney summer, the cool things to do like jetboating, paragliding, etc, and about a million other things that are too wide and varied to list!
Obviously, we've had a few visitors as well, and now Ciara has arrived to live too, with many more to come, which is always fun. To soothe my itchy feet (there isn't really ANYWHERE to go around here holiday wise, as it's so isolated!) I'm planning trips to Samoa, and to Oz for Christmas, but not because I don't like it here, because I do. The current train of though will bring me back here after a trip home next summer, because right now, I just can't imagine why anyone would possibly want to leave!
Oh, and for all you non-believers out there who thought I'd never do it...I'm finally learning to drive! Road users beware! :-)
