South Island New Zealand

Greetings from the nation on the bottom of the world.
I've been to Auckland, and the lively capital Wellington.
Now I'm in Queenstown in the South Island a place of stark beauty and lots of sheep.
New Zealand has a population of roughly 4.5 million.
That's slightly more than Toronto.
It occurred to me that the Air New Zealand jumbo jet I saw at the airport (its a government owned company) cost roughly $120 million so each man, woman and child is on the hook for $30 or something.
Its like Toronto having its own airline, navy, air force etc.
Not really.
Still it makes you think.
I'm struck at how safe everything feels.
Internal domestic flights have no security checks or metal detectors.
People meet their arriving friends at the gate.
Everyone is thoroughly decent and appear as sophisticated as a big city guy like moi.
The landscape yields a photo op at every turn.
Its winter here and I arrived in the late afternoon so the light had flattened out and low lying clouds were threatening to dump rain /snow but held off.
I expect the weather will be crap tomorrow but hope I'll get some decent pictures.

As I said the place feels very innocent.

I can't remember the last time I saw someone hitch hiking.

That's it for today.

The travel has worn me out and I'm looking forward to a couple of days in the wilderness before heading to Sydney for a conference on Sunday.

Stay well everyone

T