As we said, Queenstown is the winter city of New Zealand and it celebrates the winter festival at the beginning of the season. It’s a mixture between new years eve and midsummer day. The people in town are preparing the stage for the big concert, the booths for mulled wine, warm Swedish cider, beer, food and fireworks. The weather looks good and the excitement is in the air. It looks like it’s a big thing down here!

The backpacker hostel is full for the weekend and  the town looks lively as well. They offer boat trips on the lake, but we don’t want to spoil our memories from of Milford, so we settle for a walk in town. The landscape it’s great, quiet, the dark water in the lake, the green of the forest and the white on top of the mountains at the back.  Beautiful!

Walking around town you can see people with: winter jackets, t-shirts, wool socks, shorts, winter boots, sandals and any combination of those, like: wool socks and sandals, winter boots and t-shirt. Some even walk around bare-feet, which might look trendy to some, but most likely horribly cold…no judgment! As the sun sets the music starts playing on stage they have built over the water in the harbor. Hits from the 80’s set the vibe. The fireworks are always the cherry of the cake, and they usually start when you are in the worst place ever, like queuing for mulled wine. Sure you don’t want to leave the queue where you have stood for too long, but you also don’t want to miss the fireworks, because they could be over any minute…hard choices…we decide to stay in queue and luckily all other people disappear 😀

We end the evening eating fish and chips at the little kiosk close to the beach, it starts raining, people are leaving, the party is over, but the winter is officially started! Very well, we’ll be off to sunnier Australia in the morning.