Arrival to Queenstown...

We arrived in Queenstown on Monday afternoon to attend the volunteer meeting for the Winter Festival. The 1hr drive from Wanaka (another smaller mountain town) to Queenstown was astoundingly beautiful as we climbed and descended through the mountains. Queenstown is often called the adventure capital of the world and it is quite evident upon arrival; there is a constant buzz and just walking down the streets gets your adrenaline pumping. It sits on Lake Wakatipu with the Southern Alps looking like they’ll slide into the lake any minute.

A couple of the ski mountains are already open, but the Winter Festival marks the official start of winter. It is a 10 day festival filled with music, parties, races, and a huge assortment of other random activities. There are about 5 new stores on the main street who are frantically trying to finish setting up their merchandise and store front so they’ll be open for the huge influx of visitors.

We are still awaiting our final volunteer assignments, but we hope to get a good mix of work both on the mountain and down in the town center.

As far as work goes, it sounds like we came at the best time possible in a place where there is an endless supply of people wanting work for a very limited number of positions. We’ve met countless people who have been here since the end of May desperately looking for any work at all. We’ve heard from job search agencies and locals that places will start hiring again in the next week. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, Rachel landed a coveted job as a housekeeper at one of the big hostels, which offers free accommodation in exchange for 3hrs of cleaning each day. Among her tasks are cleaning up spoons from all the shower floors! Sound random? Rachel was perplexed too, so she asked another cleaner what the deal was. The showers in the hostel have water saving faucets that only stay on for 10 seconds at a time. Residents have figured out that if they jam a spoon into the space between the handle, the water will stay on until they’re ready to get out. Sounds silly…but we did it this morning and it worked great.

All for now.