May 6, 2008 - Te Anau to Queenstown

 

May 6, 2008 – Te Anau to Queenstown

Weather:  Mostly Fine, 7C

 

Today we drove from Te Anau up to Queenstown which is a relatively short drive of 166km.  We went directly to the gondola for Bob’s Restaurant and purchased the tickets for the team.  Dawn had already made the reservations for us. 

 

 

Kingston Flyer Locomotive - talked to mechanic about an hour.

 

 

 

Downtown Arrowtown

 

 

Kingston Flyer Car

 

 

 

Lake Wakatipu south of Queenston

 

 

 

Rush's enjoying view of Lake Wakatipu

 

After checking into the campground Roy, Marjory, Joan and myself all loaded into our RV and drove up to Arrowtown which is about a 20 minute drive north of Queenstown.  Arrowtown was a gold mining town originally and is a quaint little town now with a lot of nice shops and an interesting museum telling the history of the gold rush in the area.  You can still pan for gold in the stream there and the story is that a few years ago someone found a nugget that they ended up selling on eBay for $12,000.  We didn’t even try.

 

Later it was back to Queenstown and a trip up on the gondola to Bob’s Restaurant overlooking Queenstown.  It’s a great sight at night with all the lights on in the town.  Of course on the way up you can enjoy watching the paragliders floating down to town and the bungy jumpers that apparently try to jump towards the gondola on their giant rubber band.

 

The restaurant was a little disappointment this year as they were remodeling their main dining room and they had put the buffet and dining into a smaller area and no live entertainment.  They still had a lot of food and very large selection of desserts.  We left overstuffed.

 

Life is good.

 

Kiwi word of the day:  Chilly Bin – Picnic Cooler