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After wrapping up a work day on Saturday, we popped over to the Queenstown Events Centre, an outdoor venue for cricket and concerts, for the first annual Peak Music Festival. The festival featured a few local bands like dDub and Salmonella Dub, a popular Kiwi band called Kora, British DJs the Utah Saints, and headliner Ministry of Sound. We heard news around 6pm that the Ministry of Sound was still in London and Utah Saints would be appointed the new headliner. Oh well. In the end, we both agreed that the two local bands, dDub and Salmonella Dub, were by far our favorite and perhaps we should have saved the cash and just seen them at a local bar. A majority of the music we have found down here seems to be electronic and Salmonella Dub, with acoustic guitar and bongos, was a live version of what you would normally hear a DJ spinning at a club. They had a lot of energy on stage and we look forward to seeing them live again.

We got a late start on Sunday. Sleeping in to 10am is a rare occurrence for the two of us but with such long days, we hardly noticed. We spent a leisurely morning at home and headed into town around noon for a hike that we have been talking about since we arrived in Queenstown. Ben Lomond peak sits about 4,500 feet above Queenstown, offering views that overlook ALL surrounding mountains. Although a popular trail, we hit it on a beautiful day and enjoyed a late lunch on the peak looking out over Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables.

Probably the highlight of our weekend in Queenstown was a somewhat unexpected visit from two very close family friends. Alan and Lili Penkower have known my dad since the 60s and are very much a part of our family. Their son, Jonathan, spent quite a bit of time living and working in Queenstown about ten years ago and they have been planning a trip down here ever sense. It was a pleasure to show them around during their first visit to Queenstown. We met up with them right before lunch and didn’t stop talking and catching up until we said goodnight just before midnight. We were only able to squeeze out a few stories from them involving my dad and some sort of riot or political march. We had quite a full day as well . . .we went to lunch at Brazz, took a stroll through the Queenstown Gardens, visited the Chinese Settlement in Arrowtown immediately followed by a delicious ice cream cone dipped in chocolate, and after a quick visit to our house, we spent the remainder of the evening enjoying dinner at Fish Bone. They are spending the next few days in the Milford Sound and we will hopefully be able to see them off on their way back through this weekend.