A day-trip from Queenstown

After taking a short detour from our South Island adventure due to the recent floods, with this post we have once again returned to our journey.  

After resting up a bit in Queenstown, we were once again ready to see some sights.  Today's adventure took us first, to a historic gold-mining town, and then to a high bridge for a look at the very up-to-date sport of bungy jumping.  

Are you ready to come along?  Well, then, let's do it.  We'll return to Queenstown this afternoon and take a cruise across a lake to a sheep station where we'll have dinner.  You'll have to return to my site next week though to see that. (I've already worked on it a bit and the pictures are impressive.) 

Here we are in Arrowtown.  Back in1862, it became a booming gold rush destination for thousands. The very first shipment of gold that left town in January of '63 weighed 748 pounds.   

Although the gold rush was long ago, you can still rent pans and go down to the Arrow River that runs through the town and try your luck.  To insure that we found some gold during our visit, we stopped into one of the gold store/jewelers in town and bought our grandsons each a vial filled with pieces of sand-sized gold.    

This is the bakery.  The good smells drew us in and we left with a couple of freshly baked, French-style baguettes.  In my opinion, there are few things better.  We bought some coffee from another place, found a spot to sit down, and marveled at our comfort.  

A painting in the coffee shop.

Cars look somewhat out of place here, don't they? 

  I can imagine horses and wagons here.  

Let's get back on the bus. We've got places to go....

Notice that the 'bungy bridge' has come into view. We're approaching the A.J. Hackett Bungy/Zipline Center above the Kawarau River.

Here we are, out of the bus and in the center. Well, who's going to jump?

The moment of truth. Will she do it? 

There she goes.

Almost at full extension

She's on her way back up. Quite a bounce, huh? 

The jumpers are taken from the cord into the boat.  

I've seen this woman and her child go down the zipline several times now.  The woman, on the left of course, started out by going down in tandem with her child. Then, confidence gained, they split up and went down separately.  The third time, the woman rode down like Superman flies, laying flat with her arms stretched out ahead of her. She rode her fourth ride in the chair,  but backwards. This is their fifth ride and here, she is doing it upside down as you see.  Her daughter was content to use the foreword facing chair each time.  

Wow, we've had a full day of fun and it's a long ways from being over.  We're only about 15 km or so from Queenstown so it won't take long to get back to our hotel.  We have a busy evening planned featuring a ride on a 110 year-old steam ship. Don't worry, no baling required.  

Be sure to check in next week for those great photos.  -djf