Further South than ever before

After the excitement of helicopters and Orcs we took at pit stop just down the road in Omarama, a tiny place in the high country with a pleasant campsite ringed by mountains. We caught up on the laundry and cooked our own dinner in the van before continuing our journey south.
We drove through some amazing mountain passes and alongside Lake Dunstan before stopping for coffee and home made apple cake in Cromwell, home of Central Otago Pinot Noir and amazing vines clinging to the steep valley sides. The road onwards took us beside roaring rivers, vineyards and frit orchards till we reached Arrowtown, which was to be our final camp site stop. A really pretty village, ‘born of gold’ as people started finding gold in the river and built a town around it. We wandered round the quaint town centre and alongside the river. There were people panning for gold and nuggets for sale in the shops, but we were happy just to admire the scenery and stroll on the river banks. We had a very fine dinner at Saffron, three different curries (duck, soft shell crab and chicken) for me and lamb for John before retiring for our final sleep in the bunk over the driver’s seat. During the night a real gale blew up and we were constantly woken by the van rocking in the wind, clearly time to move to more substantial accommodation! It was raining pretty hard as we emptied the various waters and cleaned the van and repacked our suitcases. We headed into Queenstown where we admired the Shotover gorge but didn’t feel compelled to take a jet boat through it.
It was sad to say goodbye to the big Maui van which had served us so well on our adventurous 2000km journey through New Zealand but nice to check into the Copthorne and look forward to a hot bath in a private bathroom and to hang our clothes up in the wardrobe. It was very windy and pouring with rain, so apart from a quick walk round town we stayed in the hotel enjoying the comforts of a solid building. Queenstown is the adventure capital of the world but I’m afraid we rather let the side down and didn’t bungee jump, go canyoning, rafting or hang gliding but just watched it all go by from our charming lake view room – very disappointing for the man in Waterstone’s in Manchester who sold us Lonely Planet and was keen to which extreme sports we were planning!