Day 13 - Queenstown, New Zealand

Happy New Year!!!  We will be ringing in 2010 in less than 7 hours!  We will be the first ones in the world to ring it in!  They have a huge party on the village green here in Queenstown, with food, drinks and fireworks! 

Today was a light day so far.  I had planned to skydive with NZ Skydive this morning, got up at 8:30 for a 9:30 jump, travelled an hour out on Gorge road to the small skydive field.  I was one person behind when they cancelled the jumps for the day!!!  One girl actually went up and they brought her back down!  UGH.  Funny, the same people that we climbed the glacier with, were on my skydive coach!  Small world here in NZ.  The cloud base was just too low today to jump, the plane was only able to get to 7000 feet and we were jumping at 12000 feet today.  They can't drop you above the clouds, obviously, as they need to see where they are dropping you so that you don't land on the Remarkables mountain chain or in the lake!  I was so ready, had my suit and my gear all on....such a disappointment!  It has been rather cloudy here, so doing it tomorrow will probably not happen either.  Too bad, it could have been a check off that bucket list!  (no need for comments from the peanut gallery here...MOM, xoxo)

Once I returned to the hotel, I met Jeff for lunch.  The whole town is booked up - spas, restaurants, activities, etc.  We tried to get into the spa, but it was full, so we are taking a 10 minute drive out to Arthur's Pass to visit Onsen Hot Pools.  The pools are housed in private cedar-lined bathing rooms, each complete with shower, changing area, and mountain views. A unique feature of Onsen Hot Pools are the retractable picture windows: you can convert your pool room from indoor to outdoor and back again at the touch of a button!  We are pretty excited about this, as it's been rather cold here today, probably in the mid 50's and windy! 

Tonight we will probably just grab some food from a vendor and take part in the bar hopping and fireworks!  It will be cool to ring this in 19 hour ahead of the US!!!

Have a great New Years Eve!  It's been a great 2009, let's make 2010 even better!  We have so many things to look forward to (Jax Brown in Feb 2010)!!!

XOXO

J&J