The 9th of March is a day best forgotten. Over the weekend, we had experienced clutch problems, including a definite odor of burned clutch. I called Happy Campers and left a message on their answering machine about it, emailed Touring New Zealand, and called AA road service. The AA people told me they would be glad to charge me overtime to look at our vehicle, but they couldn't actually do anything unless I actually had a malfunction, not just a bad smell. So, in spite of Pegah's objection that I wasn't taking her seriously, I insisted on pressing on to Glenorchy to the Wizard's Vale, the outskirts of Bree, the place where Bilbo and Company left Rivendale, and the location of the Tower of Orthanc.
	We made it to the outskirts of Fernhill when the clutch locked up and refused to let me shift out of third gear. As fate would have it, we didn't have any bars on either of our cell phones, so I decided to hike back along the shore of Lake Wakitipu to the nearest houses to find a way to call AA Road Service for help. Along the way, I encountered some people on the beach who didn't have any bars on their phones, either, so I trudged from one unoccupied house to another trying to find one where somebody had a telephone actually connected by wires. I finally found a helpful fellow airplane pilot who put me touch with the AA people and gave me a ride back to our immobilized vehicle.
	We were finally rescued by a tiny elderly gentleman in a tweed hat who looked remarkably like Bilbo, and his younger partner he described as a "long legged bugger." They spent over an hour in a well-used ancient wrecker searching for our campervan at the address Pegah's GPS said it was instead of the geographical coordinates showing on mine, which the AA operator didn't want to know. (We should probably have been more suspicious of any GPS receiver provided by Happy Campers!) The AA team got the campervan to a service station that arranged to install a new clutch. They took us to a hotel where we each got a private bedroom and I took the opportunity to calm down with some Gideon bible reading.
	Having been effectively immobilized waiting for our campervan to be repaired, we decided to play tourist and wander around the streets of Queenstown. One of the places we noted was the Fergburger Restaurant, with a long queue of young people outside. Our AA friend "Bilbo" had informed me that they had absolutly the best burgers in the world. As it turned out, CNN says the same thing on their website! Fergburger's own website is, um, unusual; check it out! Just down Schotover street, at the roundabout across from the AJ Hacket Bungy offices, is the Queenstown i-Site, where you can get information, maps, and guidebooks about everything to see and do in New Zealand.
	Just down the street is Koko Black, a candy shop to make any chocolate lover in the entire civilized world think he'd died and gone to heaven! Their candy is a work of art! They appear to be doing a thriving business, even though their chocolates range from $2.08 to $3.40 apiece! Of course, in a country in which the adult minimum wage is $14.25 an hour, this is not as expensive as Americans might imagine. They also sell chocolate-coated treats of various kinds, as well as bulk chocolate with inclusions of the customer's choice. They are available to partner with restaurants and other retail outlets to create specialized and custom designed confections for the discriminating connoisseur.
	The rows of streetside shops and restaurants are definitely part of the unique charm of the city of Queenstown. An urban community of roughly 12,500, it is quite small by American standards but is still the 29th largest urban area in New Zealand, which has a total population of about 4.6 million people. As a result, establishments of all kinds are scaled to suit the number of prospective customers. In some cases, small food outlets share a central area, such as this McDonald's. Those in New Zealand known, locally as "Macca's," appear to have a much wider selection of meal items than Americans are used to. On the other hand, I found it impossible anywhere to get plain coffee or scrambled eggs in a sandwich.
	When we first arrived in Queenstown, it was Friday during lent, so Pegah agreed to have seafood with me at the Fishbone Bar and Grill. They source only sustainable fresh fish and shellfish from the waters around the South Island, straight off the fishing boats. Their menu is inspired by Asian, Europen, American and Indian traditional dishes. It changes daily because the fish do also. They grow much of their fruit and vegetables, including 18 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, at Fishbone Farm, at nearby Arthur's Point. Dominating the entire Queenstown downtown area, though, is Bob's Peak and, at it's summit, the Skyline Gondola Restaurant where we had our magnificent dinner Monday night.
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