Arrowtown and Wanaka

The town of Arrowtown is just a short drive outside Queenstown on the way to Wanaka, and we stopped off there for the morning and early afternoon.

It's a lovely wee town alright, but as the guidebook rightly points out, it's all rather posh with fancy craft shops and expensive cafes and restaurants, and all very neat and tidy. It did have a cool quirky cinema though that looked very impressive with it's huge luscious drapes and chandeliers, and they seemed to play a lot of arthouse movies (well they do describe themselves as a 'boutique cinema'), but of course we didn't have time to see anything there.

After strolling around the very small town centre we explored the old Chinese Settlement, an old mining area that I thought was very well presented and quite poignant.

After that we did a hike past another 'Lord of the Rings' film location (where the Nazgul dark riders are washed away by the raging river), which continued along the lovely river trail up into the hills and past a famous miner's hut (now just a ruin). It turned into quite a long walk actually, but passed through some really gorgeous scenery, and yet again we had the entire hike all to ourselves.

When we got back to Arrowtown we had a nice lunch in one of the little cafes and a drink before heading off again towards Wanaka.

We arrived at Wanaka in the late afternoon and settled into the camp site on the outskirts of the town. Wanaka markets itself as another one of New Zealands adrenalin centres, but in the off season it too was rather quite (although we'd missed their famous 'Warbirds over Wanaka' international air show by just a couple of weeks). But of course it's got another famously scenic location, and the highlight of our stay there was climbing the impressive Mount Roy.

It was a full days hike, and although the gradient to the summit was quite shallow, the climbing was just relentless. Eventually we made it to the top, after numerous stops to rest and to just take in the ever improving views as we got higher and higher. We had a well deserved packed lunch at the top, from where the views were literally panoramic and fantastic in all directions, although a local guy at the summit told us we couldn't quite make out Mount Aspiring due to distant cloud cover, but we could make out the lower reaches of it's glaciers.

That night we had a quick and tasty dinner in a tiny little Indian place and then relaxed in Wanaka's quirky Cinema Paradiso and saw 'American Gangster' sitting on comfy sofas (the Morris Minor was already taken!), and had a drink at the interval (we could have ordered dinner).

Another day we did some more serious hiking to view the Rob Roy Glacier in Aspiring National Park. This time the going was much easier, as there wasn't much climbing involved. Again, all the usual superlatives apply to the views and the scenery, and we had no problem finding a secluded spot for our lunch at the main viewing area, and so sat staring at the huge hanging glacier eating our sambos, hoping in vain to see an ice avalanche.

One funny little incident (which I sure Mr. Mullins will find somewhat familiar), was as I was standing right in front of an information panel reading about the glacier, this Israeli tourist guy just walks right up in front of me to photograph the same panel, and thereby completely blocks my view. He made no gesture of apology, no 'excuse me', nothing, and it wasn't as if he could have thought I was looking at anything else either. I was pretty disgusted, but not quite amazed, as I've travelled enough to have encountered a fair bit of this kind of behaviour. I know stereotyping can be a very dangerous thing to do, but I'm finding it harder and harder not to do it with Israeli's I've encountered while travelling, which of course is a great pity. Anyway, I let the guy know that I thought he was being very rude, and he got the point.

On the way back to Wanaka we stopped off to have a look at the Diamond Lake, and then as the daylight was fading I decided to risk a quick jaunt up the adjacent Rocky Hill. It turned out to be a much easier climb than I thought, so we had loads of time to get back to the van before dark. At the top of the aptly named Rocky Hill we finally got great views of Mount Aspiring, which really is an impressive looking peak.

So after Wanaka it was time to head to the first of New Zealands most famous glaciers, Fox Glacier.