Return To Arrowtown, 2014

From our encampment near Queenstown, we drove on to hyper-touristy Arrowtown, a gold-rush town we had visited in 2009, and had been impressed with, then. In 2014, it struck us--absent the LOTR sites we'd already seen--as quite touristy, with little redeeming merit but its "historic" "Chinatown." Lots of tour buses.

X marks the spot where a gold nugget was found, sparking off
one of the South Island's several gold rushes; it's interesting
how close New Zealand history is with that of the US West...fur,
whaling (where applicable), minerals, timber, abuse of the natives,
et al., livestock, now tourism

Actually, about the only thing that interested us in Arrowtown this time was the
Chinese settlement DOC has reconstructed

Imagine the tourists tossing coins in, wishing for good luck,
regularity, etc.

The usual...

Arrowtown main drag