Queenstown – A very active day indeed.

The sun shone as we got up this morning and whilst Jennifer attended to some important washing, my socks, I planned the day based on the tons of information that was available. I also checked on scenic flights which we are anxious to do and we have a booking for Friday 15^th from Mount Cook, not cheap!! But the cost of a one hour flight for the two of us is about the same as a business fare to New York from London, so we really hope it will be worth it. We are due to land on one of the Glaciers, this should be very interesting.

We left with a quick drive through Queenstown and headed out to the Snow Skiing area of the Coronet Peak and with the sun shining it was great to see such wonderful views over the Town and Lake.

We drove almost to the top, as far as the line of mist and then decided to head down and there we saw a one legged man cycling up this very steep road. How he did this I cannot possibly imagine as I doubt whether Jennifer or I could have done it with two legs.

Then off to see the famous ‘Shotover Jet’ boats racing through the canyon, it was quite hair raising as you can see from the photographs. But it was well worth the visit.

We then headed of the historic old Gold Rush town of ‘Arrowtown’ which is a very nice place with lots of good shops and restaurants and so we had a quick bite here and wandered around and went to the Chinese Settlement. In the late 1800’s over 8000 Chinese from the Guangdong Province came here to make their fortune although most of them did not. They built their own small town right by the river.

Just as we were leaving Arrowtown we came across two old Bentley motor cars that are part of a large group who started touring the South Island about two weeks ago. Two lovely cars although a garage mechanic nearby mentioned that one of the other cars had a brake failure and went head on into another car, the damage to the car was more severe than the damage to the occupants.

Now it was time for ‘Bungee Jumping’ at the famous bridge. This is a dangerous sport in my book and not for the faint hearted. Here you stand 150 feet above a fast flowing river lined with rocks and you jump head first and hope you don’t hit your head on the bottom. Not the best way to spend your day and so we felt that we needed a drink and headed of the (Winery) as they call it, we English call it a vineyard. So we visited Chard Farm Winery and sampled a few wines, but not drinking, just slurping as the true professional does it, Noel was driving so could not drink. We finally purchased a nice bottle of ‘Judge & Jury’ Chardonnay for us to test at some later date. Perhaps even tonight we may try it.

By this time it was around 4.30 pm so we headed back to the Motel via the supermarket to buy something for tea.