Bungee (nearly!)

We left Queenstown in the rain and drove around past Coronet Peak to Arrowtown. A tasty breakfast in the bakery cafe )good bacon and egg sandwiches, with Ed having a spicy chicken pie!).

The rain was easing and we walked up the main street of this old gold mining town, which still looked like a street from a wild west movie. Bought a few souvenirs then had a look at the historic Chinese settlement, laid out where the Chinese gold miners used to live. They had been invited by the town elders as the European miners moved on to the West Coast and they were worried the town would die, but they were treated with scepticism and suspicion by most of the locals, similar to immigrants today. They strived to earn $100-$200 to return to Chine and buy a farm, vastly improving their life there.

From Arrowtown we aimed for Twizel, but a few km along the rode we saw signs to the AJ Hackett Karawau Gorge bungy jump and as we were stuck behind a slow moving camper van we pulled in to atch some jumpers. We watched a single and a double jump an also watched some people going down the relatively new Zipline. Ed declared he wanted to do it, so we checked the minimum age - 8, but 8 or 9 year olds needed to ride with an adult. So Tash, Ed and I did it. The maximum weight was 150kg and we ended up having to take off shoes, jumpers and coats to get down to the limit - made for quite a cold ride!

We got harnessed up - we did it in a sitting position rather than the full superman dive that we had seen others do. Ed was given a go-pro camera to record the trip (as was Tash) and on the count of 3 the release button was pressed and we were off. It was exhilarating, think we reached about 60km/h before hitting the end. The mechanism then cleverly spun us around and we were pulled back up to the start, uncoupled and viewed our photos and video, which we bought of course.

We then had a couple of hours still to Twizel so sped on through the Lindis Pass that we had gon through 10 days ago from Wanaka to Oamaru and hit Twizel about 2.30. Had a pie each and some shared chips in the bakery, then bought breakfast stuff from the supermarket then headed off to Mount Cook Village about 45 minutes away. Twizel didn't have much to it (it was built in the 60's to house people working in the hydroelectric dams on nearby rivers).

The weather was fine and we got to Mount Cook Village about 4pm. The motel was new since our last visit when we had stayed in the Hermitage Hotel. A quick walk into the Village and we booked a 4wd trip for tomorrow morning, though the weather forecast is for more rain so the trip may have to take a different route to normal as the torrential rain today had seen some tracks closed as a precaution against landslips.Read more