So you may think I broke my promise about not going on another dinner cruise, but I think what we did tonight was a cruise, and then dinner.
We took a steam boat out into the lake, and cruised along for about 40 minutes to a farm at the other side of the lake, where we had a lovely meal. Read the rest of this entry »
As I have mentioned before Queenstown is the adventure capital of the world. It is probably most famous for Bungee jumping, and boasts some quite awesome heights from which to jump from. There is also Jet boat tours along the river bank that look insane. The boats do 360 spins at 50 mph… There is skiing, parasailing, hangliding, skydiving, stunt plane flying… Imagine anything that you should only do with good life insurance, and before you are 40.
So we were heading down south towards Queenstown, when we came across the town of Twizel. This was a temporary town built in the 1980’s to house the workers as they built the 3 hydro-electric dams that are in the area. The population is only around 1000, but the whole town got a treat in 2000 when Peter Jackson and the film crew of “Lord of the Rings†invaded the little town to film the greatest battle in cinematic history, the Battle of Pelannor Fields.
As we drove close, I said to my lovely wife “We’ve got to do the tour, no matter how much it isâ€. She smiled, and said we’ll see. Well, we did it, and it was great.
We stayed at the Hermitage Mount Cook, one of the oldest hotels in New Zealand. It is nestled on the glacial plane just below the tallest mountain in Australiasia. The drive to this mountain was stunning. The journey to the Hermitage used to take a long time, 3 days by rail and then 10 hours on horseback. Today, it took us 60 minutes from the nearby town of Twizel.
