Day 7. September 21, 2010 Cromwell to old Queenstown

Today we swapped our trusty camper van for people mover. Our day started with “operation clean and repack” our van ready for a swap. Given the girls’ capacity for orderly storing of valuables, we spent some time checking all the hiding spots for clothes, personal items and assorted valuables. The girls helped at first, then found some New Zealand girls to play with, which suited us fine. Would we campervan again, yes, going in with the knowledge we have.

The cooking, laundry, shower and toilet facilities were fantastic, as we have found in all the top ten van parks. The managers were very helpful, ringing ahead to book our accommodation at Queenstown. At noon we met Lynda’s parents (of affordable motor-homes) in Cromwell’s town square to swap vehicles. Very friendly folks and the exchange went well with no apparent issues. Thoroughly recommend Top 10, we have had a great experience with them and intend to keep using the cabins/motel rooms when we can.

With the exchange completed, we visited Cromwell’s small but excellent museum that focused on the town’s gold mining history. After the museum we explored historic Old Cromwell Town, which was a series of mid 19^th Century stores and cottages laid out in period streets. We could imagine people of the time walking the streets and laneways. The town also has two of the largest trees we have ever seen inside a town near one of three churches in an area that would have been the outskirts of the original township .

The drive today was relatively short between Cromwell and Queenstown, roughly an hour. We made a few quick photo stops to take photos of the River that the road followed most of the trip. One stop was at Roaring Meg that is a hydroelectric power station. As per usual the scenery was breath taking with the snow capped mountains constantly in view. This landscape was a particularly rugged in this part of the trip with a few natural waterfalls falling down the nearby hills and valleys. The road as Per usual was wonderful and as per usual plenty of overtaking lanes. We noticed with the van that they do accommodate vans and slow vehicles well with very regular extra lanes.

When we arrived at Queenstown we were greeted with a completely different feel of town. Every town, including the larger Christchurch and Dunedin, had a laid back low key feel, Queenstown was much busier. We were greeted by plenty of multicultural eateries, snow hire and sale shops and travel/booking agents selling tickets to fun things like bungee jumping, jet boating and jumping off bridges strapped to plastic patio chairs. We can assure all we will be photographing and watching most of these and not participating. One thing that is both exciting to us and disappointing at the same time is the snowy weather. We are booked to do a Milford Sound bus and boat tour from Queenstown tomorrow but as the road has been blocked on and off over the last few days we are unsure if it will still go ahead. We find out bright and early in the morning around 6.30am. The Van Park manager thought we would have a less than 50% going on the fact that is was currently snowing lightly and they were predicting more during the night. So we will see. We have seen this as a great fact finding trip and will get a full refund, move on and do other things if we miss out.