Hermoso NZ

So far behind in blogging! Just a quick note.

We're in Queenstown, which is more or less in the south-centre of the island, the jumping off point for Milford Sound, which is our destination and probably the most famous touristy site in NZ. On the way we stopped in Lake Tekapo (gorgeous) and Wanaka (unspeakably gorgeous). Both Okanagan like, except much more impressive mountains. A cross between Kelowna and Lake Louise, perhaps. It's hard to beat Lake Louise ;)

Weather over past 3 days has been A++++ (thank God) though the forecast is not great.

Saturday we actually go to Milford Sound, then on Sunday will start the 700k trip back to Christchurch. Route TBA depending on the weather.

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Fun fact: the province of BC is about 3.5x bigger than the entire country of NZ. The population is about the same (5M). NZ-Australia have a deal where a citizen of one can freely live and work in the other. The famous Jacinda Ardern recently caught flack for having bought a house in Sydney.

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In Tekapo we (somewhat randomly) went on a tour of a sheep farm, which was really interesting. They only get $100-$200 worth of wool per sheep per year, which seems like an awful lot of work for not much money. It costs $5 to shear a sheep (it takes about 5 minutes).

This farm had 15,000 sheep so their revenues are in the $2.5M range, I guess, which doesn't seem like much if you take into account the vast territory which they have to maintain, not to mention things like vet bills and workers (though sheep are largely self-sufficient, they mostly just let them graze and sleep outside for months on end). Almost all wool comes from females - the males are really only useful for breeding (just like humans, ha ha).

They also gave us a demo of the dogs they use to round up the sheep - extremely impressive. Like a dog you might see at the PNE, only doing real work. Incredibly well trained. Also friendly ;)

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