In the morning, we wandered around Queenstown looking for breakfast. We failed to find breakfast. We ended up deciding it was close enough to lunch time, and in an effort to save money, chose Kentucky Fried Chicken. There seem to be more KFCs in New Zealand than even McDonald’s. Plenty of Burger Kings, too. But anyway, we got ripped off at KFC. We ordered a thing of Popcorn Chicken and a thing of mashed potatoes, and a large drink, and it came to nine dollars. This box of popcorn chicken that we got was about the size of your average fruit pie box, and the potatoes were in what might be described as a double shot glass. For nine dollars. We should’ve gone to McDonald’s, we mused. We also finally wound up in a used records store. I really liked whatever they were playing in there but I neglected to inquire as to what it was, it sounded like it could’ve been the 5678’s but I’m not sure. I’m not overly familiar with the 5678’s but it’s that style of music. I don’t even know what genre that is. Anyhow, they were charging $30 for used CDs. $30! I found stuff in there for $30 that I’ve plucked off the dollar rack at Half-Price Books. That’s another thing that’s really expensive here: books. There was a bookstore that we walked by near that record shop that had a table with a sign that said, "Stock up on the classics! 3 for $20!" and they were paperbacks. But back to the CDs: the cheapest one I saw in there was $10, and it was a single. There was a table full of discounted CDs outside of the store on a table, and I saw some singles for $1-2 that I might’ve considered buying but didn’t. It would be nice to have a greater variety of music in the van, since we are still just listening to that Kerrang! CD over and over and over, but seriously. It’s ridiculous. I probably won’t find any CDs worth buying until we get to Auckland and by then it won’t matter so much because we’ll be going home. Either that or I’ll end up returning home with no other new music at all, which would be a big disappointment.
So I failed to avoid that gondola. Hesus Cristobal Jehosephat, that thing was steep. And there were sheep grazing and sleeping on the side of the mountain. Ridiculous. The view from the top was pretty nice, though. Then we went back down and I thought I’d shit myself.
We walked around Queenstown for a bit more and stopped at an internet shop type thing, where you could get fifteen minutes of internet for a dollar. It’s the lowest rate I’ve seen on internet yet, and we hadn’t checked our emails since Oamaru, so I decided it may be worth it. I had two emails from my mom, one just a response to my first email to say they were glad they’d heard from me and such. The second was an article saying that Gary Gygax had died this week. I think that’s really sad. I had always wanted to meet him, and had come close once. We were in the same room, anyway, it’s just that it was a very large room and there were about 10,000 other people in it. I am of course speaking of GenCon. Gary Gygax, for those who don’t know, was the creator of Dungeons & Dragons. He was 69.
We got some ice cream. Alyssa got a waffle. We headed out of Queenstown and up to see some Lord of the Rings film sites. First was a site not far outside of Queenstown where Gandalf rode to Isengard, plus a forest that briefly stood in for Lothlorien.We ended up on a gravel road that wound around through a forest and over a stream, which we had to drive through (it was no more than a few centimeters deep at the point where we crossed). Then we saw an exclamation point sign with a note under it (we’ve been seeing these signs across the country; I’m pretty sure it just means "attention!") that said "Film Crew." So we saw a bunch of trailers and large vehicles that were part of a film crew. We ended up turning arund and going back, but we kind of wish we’d kept going. We’re pretty sure they must have been filming The Hobbit, Amanda figures they were probably filming some Mirkwood scenes.
The next place we stopped was Arrowtown, which is where Frodo crossed the Ford of Bruinen, where Arwen saved him from the Nazgul.
We then drove to Wanaka. We stopped at a gas station, where an old lady asked me for directions to the supermarket, and we washed Lucy’s windows because we could hardly see through them anymore. We can see now! Shortly after we left the gas station, I saw the supermarket.
We stopped again by Lake Wanaka because Amanda wanted to take some pictures, and I saw a "Play It Again Records" across the street. So Amanda got her pictures and I walked over to the record shop, where just about everything was still thirty dollars used. The only thing I saw that really seemed like it was almost worth paying for was a seven disc Pearl Jam boxed set for $70. It had three complete shows on seven discs. I decided, though, that I’ve got a ton of live Pearl Jam and $70 wasn’t worth it to me. Plus, I was just so sick of that Kerrang! CD that I needed something, anything else, but if this was the replacement, I’d probably be so sick of Pearl Jam by the end of the trip that I’d not be able to listen to them for a year. So instead I allowed myself to be ripped off and bought Punk-O-Rama 8, a two-disc punk compilation that I could easily get brand new in the States for like eight bucks, for $20. But at least now we have something else to listen to! I thought a compilation would be best since it’s got multiple artists, so we won’t get bored with it so quickly.
We decided just to stay in Wanaka for the night and got a cabin at a campground. We’ve been talking cabins for the whole trip but this is the first one we’ve actually stayed at. It was pretty nice, actually, except a little smelly. It was pretty well the same setup we’d had the night before, although a little bigger and a little cheaper ($62 as opposed to $85). Once we got our stuff unloaded, Amanda & I went for a walk around the campground and then around town, where we took pictures of a Wicked van that had John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction painted on one side, and Uma Thurman on the other. There were people in the van, though, so we didn’t want to seem stalkerish and walk around their van taking pictures, so we got those two as we walked by and figured we’d get the back on the return trip. Unfortunately, by the time we headed back to the campground, that van was gone. We keep seeing awesome Wicked vans, there’s plenty of them in my video. There’ve been several that we’ve seen and not gotten pictures of that I wish we had, though.
Back in the cabin, we finally downloaded Amanda’s pictures into my laptop. There are 1676 of them so far. We perused them until the laptop battery died, then I stuck it on the charger and we went to bed. We were on the top bunk, and Amanda somehow managed to fling her pillow off of it during the night so she stole mine. Urgh.
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