Throughout our travels, we still hadn’t seen a kiwi bird, so we rectified that and bought a little Kiwi to travel with us! Today was yet another grey morning as we left Te Anau to drive to Queenstown just a couple of hours away. We saw fields dense with sheep and a massive deer farm in Mossman. And, as usual, plenty of water.
Before arriving in Queenstown, we stopped off at the old gold mining town on Arrowtown. This is where Chinese miners had been encouraged to come but were only given the plots that the Europeans had (apparently) exhausted. The Chinese village had been reconstituted and planned out with posters telling you something of what it was like to be a Chinaman in New Zealand.
Arrowtown itself was a ‘quaint’ street, lined with restaurants and plenty of shops for hikers. It also had a two-story museum which was well worth a visit, and a good ice cream shop run by Japanese, and an Old English sweet shop looking to hire Mandarin/Cantonese speaking staff.
After Arrowtown, we continued to Queenstown which is on Lake Wakatipu. Even with the low cloud over the mountains, this is clearly a very beautiful place.
Next we walked up to the Skyline gondola for even better views, and Lawrence went on the Luge rides at the top.
« Day 26: To/from Milford Sound