Behold scenic Queenstown. After a dark and dismal day yesterday, I awoke this morning to a crystal clear, crisp morning, which has continued throughout the day. I called to see if my flight had filled up for the morning and it hadn't, so I switched to the noon flight. That gave me a few hours to kill, and since the gondola in the picture is about a hundred meters from the "Pinewood," it was a logical choice. As you might guess, it was much as in the photo. Today there were fewer clouds and the sky and clouds were bluer. It was probably colder too. I took a panorama shot: six separate shots for about 180?. This picture was obviously taken with a wide angle lens, since it took me three shots to get this much (and I missed the lower half). I would say that it is one of the better views I have ever seen, but each time I am confronted with such a panorama I say that. I learned from the cab driver that the highest peak in the range (to the left of the picture) is actually a separate mountain from the others. If you look closely you can see the dividing line. He said that there is a mountain lake between the two. For such a commercial area, it is remarkably unspoiled. The air is fresh, the water is clean, and from the air you can see that most of thelake is pristine and undeveloped. The swarms of private planes, helicopters, jet boats, cruise boats and other miscellaneous motorized devices (chainsaws?) aren't really a nuisance (although I haven't spent much (any) time down at the lake.

A small deviation. A technique they use here to jack up the prices is to make everything more exotic by naming it after some foreign place. For instance there is a place called California Fried Chicken. For lunch today I ate Swiss bread with French mustard and Cheddar cheese. But I'm not quite sure where Cheddar is.