Te Anau to Wanaka

We drove the rest of the Southern Scenic Route today, up to Queenstown, where we enjoyed a scenic picnic by the lake. We didn’t partake in any of the adrenaline activities that Queenstown is famous for but we did see a few taking place, including parasailing and a strange activity where people in wetsuits with what looked like a jetpack strapped to their feet appeared to stand on large “stilts” that were actually jets of water! After lunch we drove on to Arrowtown – an old gold mining town from the mid-late 1800s – where we spent an enjoyable couple of hours. We saw the old huts in the “Chinese settlement”, where people came over from China in search of gold – interesting history, similar to the gold rush in California. There are 2 routes from Arrowtown to Wanaka, our destination for the night, and we opted for the scenic mountain pass route. En route we passed through a small town called Cardrona and we glimpsed what looked like bras on a fence as we drove past – we turned around and drove back to find out what it was all about and bizarrely found hundreds of bras tied to a long fence, collecting money for a NZ breast cancer charity. A great idea – amusing and serious both at the same time! We stayed in a “budget cabin” on a campsite (“budget” only by NZ standards – still £55 per night, without bathroom – accommodation here is expensive). On the plus side, the campsite offered a free shuttle into town (2km away), so we took advantage of that and enjoyed a pub meal, washed down with great NZ wine. Afterwards we walked back along the lake to our campsite, to walk off some of the excess calories consumed at dinner! It was a mild evening and back at the campsite Solana enjoyed playing on the swings and trampoline in the dark and we really enjoyed seeing the stars come out as the sky got darker. By the time it was fully dark, the stars were amazing – amongst others we saw Orion upside down, the Southern Cross, and we saw the Milky Way very clearly, running nearly 2/3rds of the way across the sky. The sky really was fantastic – we haven’t seen stars as good as that since the amazing dark clear skies when we were camping in South America 12 years ago...Read more