We awoke today to find a thin carpet of snow covering our car and the camp grounds. The girls got excited and played in the slushy snow with another girl staying at Van Park from Toowoomba! We met the Toowoomba family last night just after finishing our daily blog. A nice family doing much the same trip around NZ as us, certainly proves that it is a very small world. As Melissa has said regularly, given the Aussies we have met, there can’t be many left in Australia.
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| Shotover River Bridge |
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The Queenstown Shot- Over Van Park was probably the least favourite of the parks we have visited. It wasn’t bad, just overly environmentally friendly. They seem to have timers on everything, which go off at the most inconvenient times. Small inconvenient things spoiled the experience, like the cabin heaters turning off after an hour or the lights in the toilets and showers switching off part way through a visit. Everything was timed even the stoves, and cook tops which seemed a little bit over the top. Of course you could reset the timer, but that was painful having do it all the time, particularly when you are trying to heat a room. We have noticed the Top Tens are very environmentally friendly Van Parks, with multiple recycling bins and other energy saving features. Certainly can’t complain about the service and the staff were friendly and helpful. There is a second Top Ten in Queenstown would be interesting to know what it is like.
Today we visited Queenstown to ride the Skyline’s Gondola up the mountain and ride the luge. Certainly the best part of our Queenstown. The gondola was a short ride upto magnificent views of the town, mountains, lake and surrounds. Near by was AJ Hackett bungee jumping and sky chairs I believe and a helicopter joy flight service. There was no bungee jumping unfortunately as we would have loved to watch and photograph. We did partake in the luge however which was great fun. Sitting in little luges or alpine go carts, basically driven by gavity. You had a steering wheel like a bike handle to steer which was also pulled back to break. They were really great fun. We all enjoyed the rides immensely. After a fun couple of hours we rode the gondola back to the bottom.
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| Lake at Queenstown |
At the base of the gondola there was also a Kiwi and Bird Park that we would have loved to visit but the full tour was a little expensive and would have taken us an hour as we were keen to have a look at Arrowtown on our way to Wanaka we didn’t have time to do the park justice. The fact that the gondola was quite busy and hardly anyone in the bird park, which you walked past to get to most of the parking, told us it was probably not necessarily good value for money. After returning to our car we drove out of town and stopped briefly at a river crossing on the edge of town. It turned out to be the base for Shot Over Jets. We watched the jets speed up and down the river at great knots. The participants having a great time. Even though they were well covered it would have been a cold experience. One we may have participated in, in warmer weather but not when there was snow on the ground around. The car bridge over the river was magnificent.
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| View back towards Arrowtown/QT |
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| Arrowtown |
After looking around and taking some photographs we headed off to Arrowtown. What a beautiful place. It would be absolutely breath taking in autumn as most of the trees seemed to be deciduous and would have been glorious full of red and gold leaves. The town itself is very quaint and pretty. Also with a gold mining history. While here we made enquires on our route to Wanaka and found there were two. One was longer but faster driving and took us basically back to Cromwell. The other shorter but slower through the Crown Range. We opted for the range road and did not regret it. The trip up and over the range was glorious. With a amazing views back down into the valley back toward Arrowtown and Queenstown on some very tight hairpin turns. Once over the range coming down we drove into probably the driest part of NZ we had seen. But the valleys and paddocks still did not disappoint.
We arrived into Wanaka late afternoon to a very different feel town to metropolitan Queenstown. Wanaka is definitely more laid back but equally beautiful. The lake in the late afternoon was very pretty. We checked into our Wanaka Top Ten and are very happy. It appears to be older but vey comfortable with great heating. We intend having a good explore tomorrow.
We awoke today to find a thin carpet of snow covering our car and the camp grounds. The girls got excited and played in the slushy snow with another girl staying at Van Park from Toowoomba! We met the Toowoomba family last night just after finishing our daily blog. A nice family doing much the same trip around NZ as us, certainly proves that it is a very small world. As Melissa has said regularly, given the Aussies we have met, there can’t be many left in Australia. 
The Queenstown Shot- Over Van Park was probably the least favourite of the parks we have visited. It wasn’t bad, just overly environmentally friendly. They seem to have timers on everything, which go off at the most inconvenient times. Small inconvenient things spoiled the experience, like the cabin heaters turning off after an hour or the lights in the toilets and showers switching off part way through a visit. Everything was timed even the stoves, and cook tops which seemed a little bit over the top. Of course you could reset the timer, but that was painful having do it all the time, particularly when you are trying to heat a room. We have noticed the Top Tens are very environmentally friendly Van Parks, with multiple recycling bins and other energy saving features. Certainly can’t complain about the service and the staff were friendly and helpful. There is a second Top Ten in Queenstown would be interesting to know what it is like.
Today we visited Queenstown to ride the Skyline’s Gondola up the mountain and ride the luge. Certainly the best part of our Queenstown. The gondola was a short ride upto magnificent views of the town, mountains, lake and surrounds. Near by was AJ Hackett bungee jumping and sky chairs I believe and a helicopter joy flight service. There was no bungee jumping unfortunately as we would have loved to watch and photograph. We did partake in the luge however which was great fun. Sitting in little luges or alpine go carts, basically driven by gavity. You had a steering wheel like a bike handle to steer which was also pulled back to break. They were really great fun. We all enjoyed the rides immensely. After a fun couple of hours we rode the gondola back to the bottom.
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