Hey, everyone! The highlight of the past week for me has been the snowfall making its way down the mountains here in Queenstown. A bit of a chiller post this week, especially compared to last week. Although, it’s a bit refreshing to not have to write up a gigantic wall of text as seems to be the typical trend with these posts. (Edit: this did end up being a long post anyway LOL.) Once again – I sometimes can’t believe I’ve been blogging weekly for almost two years at this point. Hopefully, some of these entries will make their way into a book one day.

Aurora: Take Two

While I likely won’t have an aurora experience like that of last week any time soon (or ever?), I was able to see the aurora one more time a couple of days later.

After checking the app and seeing some reasonably good numbers, I went down to Queenstown Gardens to try my luck. I’ve discovered a nice, new vantage point at the gardens. There is a bench that has a really lovely south-facing view. While I love Mount Cecil as the backdrop for my pictures, it is a very tall mountain and so it blocks much of the lower-level auroral activity. From the gardens, I can see much lower on the horizon without a massive mountain blocking the way.

While I saw nothing near as exciting as a few days prior, I was able to see the auroral band with my eyes. Over the course of half an hour, it slowly rose higher and higher – occasionally getting brighter. With my peripheral vision, I thought I caught the occasional small beam. (I’d like to note that I will probably always be fascinated by auroras. Sorry if that bores you all LOL. Weak or strong activity, as long as I can see the aurora visibly… I am interested.)

I snapped a few pictures. One thing I do like with the weaker activity is that there’s a nice contrast between the night sky and the aurora in photographs. Instead of the aurora taking up the entire frame (which is amazing!), there’s a lovely juxtaposition. I did some minor editing – made it a little darker, popped the color a bit more. I didn’t add saturation, but I wanted to make them pop a little more. (Even with strong auroras, the pictures look much better with the smallest bump of contrast. Typically, I don’t edit the aurora pics but every now and then, I want to have a little creative license.)

I stopped back at the hostel and then – surprise – the numbers were looking even better. Jasper and I went out to the lake and watched the auroral band as it nearly hovered above Mount Cecil. We took a selfie, stayed for some time, but then decided to head back home.

Since that night, activity has been quite calm. Sunspot region 3664 has since rotated away from Earth. Here’s hoping it comes back stronger than before in a couple of weeks!

I’ve been thinking about the Mothers’ Day Aurora a lot since that night. I still can’t believe I finally got to see some color in the aurora. Yahoo! While I’m glad I was present for the event, in retrospect I do wish I’d snapped a few more pictures. Still, I’m happy I experienced it with my eyes, laying on the beach, gazing up at the sky. It was a night to remember forever. And how cool that much of the planet got to experience it as well.

First Proper Snowfall

I had been trying to figure out what my plans would be over the weekend. I didn’t want to drive anywhere far. In the end, Jasper, Yvonne, and I settled on going up to Lake Alta. I’d never properly been up The Remarkables before and it seemed like a really fun plan until… Saturday morning.

I woke up to head to the Kiwi Park and it was raining. A lot. Clouds covered the sky. One bonus from the volunteer shift was that I got to go in the morepork owl enclosure for the first time as well as the falcon! I also dodged an owl shitting on me by like three inches haha. Yikes!

I returned from Kiwi Park feeling quite tired and so I took a nap. Obviously, Lake Alta wasn’t happening. I was disappointed since I hadn’t done much since my return from Rakiura/Stewart Island. Oh, well!

When I woke up from my nap, I decided to work on a drawing. I took my sketchpad up to the kitchen and… WHAT? The clouds had cleared and I could see the mountains were covered in snow. I decided not to draw. Instead, I walked around town and then went up the gondola to Skyline. I wanted to take some pictures of the first proper snowfall!

The Remarkables looked so awesome. As did Mount Cecil and surrounds.

However, I think my favorite view was actually the one looking towards Coronet Peak. I loved the gradient of the snow-topped mountains to the untouched valley below.

Saturday Night Shenanigans

In the evening, Jasper, Yvonne, and I went out to eat at Lonestar. I hadn’t gone before. It was okay lol. We waited like an hour for the food and it ended up being pretty mediocre. But that’s okay – they can’t all be bangers. And regardless of that, the three of us were together having fun as we always seem to.

While Jasper and I were undecided on whether or not we’d go out dancing, we ultimately decided to. I’m really glad we did. I think with the change in the season, everyone has been a little low energy but going out was just what we needed. Upon going to World Bar, we ran into Cammy, Alexis, Emma, Lauren, her new boo Phoenix, Carly, and Matt. Even though Queenstown is very small, it’s always a treat to bump into people we know. At one point, Cammy held up his phone towards the DJ with a sign that said “PLAY ABBA”… and no shit, the next song the DJ played was Abba and we all went wild hahaha. Lauren was also totally tearing up the dance floor. She was the real MVP that night.

After maybe 45min, the group split up. Some people went home, and we wanted to go to the next bar. Emma, Yvonne, Jasper, Taiyo, and I moved along to Winnie’s. Yvonne’s sister Victoria ended up bumping into us, too. Yahoo! And later, Emily which is frequently the cherry on top of a night out dancing.

It was a fun night! We ended up calling it around 1am.

Sunday Fun Day

On Sunday, snow was still clinging to the mountains. Abby, Yvonne, Jasper, Taiyo, and I went bowling at Kingpin. While it initially seemed like Taiyo was going to be the loser… he ended up bowling like four strikes in a row at the end and kicked all our asses haha.

I kind of wished we’d done another activity at Kingpin but I had to get to my friend’s birthday party. Time was somewhat limited.

Despite the shortness of our bowling game, there was no shortness of goofiness and laughter.

Afterwards, we walked to the lake to hang out for a moment. Abby has never really seen snow before. She was slightly in awe of it. I suggested we go up the Tiki Trail one day so she can actually like… touch it haha. She shared a story of how when her grandmother was Abby’s age, she saw snow for the first time, ALSO in Aotearoa New Zealand. It’s pretty cool how life can be a little cyclical like that. And generational, too. How bizarre that Abby landed in the same place as her grandmother, and was able to see snow there for the first time, too. Abby shared her grandmother’s experience of feeling a snowflake land on her tongue, and how Abby wants to have the same experience. As someone who hails from a cold place where it often snows in winter, it was really endearing to hear that story. For me, sticking my tongue out to let a snowflake land on it is practically a given any winter in Chicago. But for some people in the world, they may never see snow in real life. Crazy.

I stopped back at the hostel and then ventured over to see Yinon for his birthday. It had been well over a month since I’d seen any slackline peeps. It was nice to reconnect. Yinon had provided lots of food for us. Early in the evening, we practiced acroyoga together. I had really only done it once before with some random person on the Wednesday Night Circus Kids gathering and I felt pretty nervous. Since I know Yinon, I felt much more comfortable. I trusted he wouldn’t let me fall. (P.S. He didn’t.)

Later in the evening, we played some fun games. With one of them, we had to write a character/thing on a post-it note and then stick it on the forehead of the person sitting next to us. That person then had to guess what the thing was. And so we went, around and around, asking questions about what our character was. Later, we did some music trivia where Liv played two seconds of a song and we had to guess the song.

Such a great time. Happy birthday, Yinon!

Once back at the hostel, Jasper and I continued his Iconic American Movies Education with The Devil Wears Prada. Abby and Yvonne came over, too. It was so funny to have the four of us all piled onto my bed. Near the end of the movie, Abby was practically falling asleep haha. Jasper enjoyed the movie.

More movie nights to come!

Miscellaneous

When bumping into Bruno at Winnie’s on Saturday night, he gave me the most flattering comment. “Whether it’s pop or house, you’re always the best dancer.” I don’t know about BEST, but I sure love to dance haha.

One of the perks of it getting dark early now is that there’s much more time to potentially see the southern lights. When I first arrived in November, it wasn’t officially nighttime until 11pm. Now, I could probably see activity as early as 7pm. Much better haha.

Art of the Week

Reflections

I recently was re-reading some of my old blog posts. I found a couple of things rather interesting.

In my Tasmania blog, I mentioned how “I would like to live somewhere one day where the auroras are frequent.” How funny is that? That dream certainly came true.

And another post. On my most recent birthday, I was asking myself if maybe the mountains were too high for me to see the southern lights in Queenstown. NOPE! There has been strong enough activity where the beams have stretched to directly above my head. No longer concerned about that haha.

I read some other posts, too. From my time in Jordan and Israel… Hawaii. It is very nostalgic to jump back in time like that. I’m grateful I’ve kept up with these travel blogs. As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, it’ll be really cool to read back on these years and years from now. What a life.

So, what’s next? Abby, Yvonne, Jasper and I will probably get together this Saturday once I finish Kiwi Park. If it’s nice weather, maybe we’ll go up to Lake Alta. If not, maybe we’ll go to Glenorchy and do a little hike there. We shall see. I just booked my hostel room for Oamaru two weekends from now. I’m looking forward to that!

Until next time – sending you all my love. xx