Day 3 – Wednesday 1 April

A beautiful cool sunny morning in Wanaka. This place is situated in such a lovely place, overlooking the lake and the snow capped (snow covered in winter) mountains. It is amazing that in a small town they have a lot of motels & they all seem to have the “No Vacancy” sign out. There are SO many young back packers & most of the many cafe/restaurants & bars are employing these young people to work for them. They have at least 6 Real Estate Agencies with many expensive properties for sale. They have two huge bicycle stores with expensive special bicycles & the most amazing thing is that they have a big wedding (or other novelty) cake store – there must be a lot more to this little town than what we could only see, “”TOURISTS”..

Another great breakfast looking over Lake Wanaka before heading out along the Crown Range Road & stopping at Cardrona & its famous pub. The Cardrona Hotel is one of the oldest hotels in New Zealand & is in a fairly isolated location, there are not a lot of people living around Cardrona, perhaps more in winter during the ski season. It is a quaint old building with an old Chrysler car parked outside for effect. Across the paddock is a deer farm with lots of deer running around & some very vocal bulls rounding up the does. The drive over the Crown Range Road is very windy but compensates with some spectacular views from the seriously high mountain. Queenstown & Lake Wakatipu can be seen in the distance surrounded by the Remarkable Ranges. The air is very brisk at the top of the range.

At the bottom of the mountain we turned off into Arrowtown, an old gold mining village & explored the historic section of town. The Arrowtown Museum is a real credit to the people that put it together & run it, extremely interesting & well worth the visit. The old bank building it is located in has been used to good effect. The original & restored historic buildings have been used to good effect & help to retain the feel of what it may have looked like years ago. The boysenberry ice cream they make is very tasty & we had lunch at one of the old hotels. After lunch we walked through the old Chinese area of Arrowtown & looked through a collection of restored Chinese miner buildings & huts. The buildings were small & the doorways very short. The descriptions around the site put up by the historical society provided an interesting insight into the life of the Chinese miners in Arrowtown. The trees along the Arrow River are mainly of European origin & the leaves are starting to turn colour, making a picturesque backdrop to the area. A lovely quaint little town that we were lucky to spend a few hours wandering around in on a balmy Autumn day.

We continued our journey on to Queenstown on the road past the Shotover River & over Arthurs Bridge, another very scenic drive following the river on its steep path towards Queenstown. The Copthorne Lakeside Hotel was reasonably simple to find & we booked in & had a short rest before walking the short distance downhill & exploring the centre of Queenstown. The town is bustling with tourists & it seems that nearly every third shop is a restaurant of some type. It certainly got built up a lot more since we were here last. We walked to the wharf on the edge of the lake & settled for dinner at one of the lakeside restaurants, Pier 19. The food was excellent, although as the sun went down the outside seating got a bit chilly & we both were happy that we brought our jackets with us, we even used some of the provided blankets to keep our knees warm. As we were eating the steamboat Earnslaw returned from a cruise & docked near us. The walk back uphill to our hotel tested our stamina & breathing as it is fairly steep, we walked a lot today & should sleep well tonight.