On To Queenstown

Having satisfied ourselves of so many things agricultural and pastoral, and retail, we drove on, very leisurely, to Queenstown, overnighting at the Crown Ridge overlook and then at the AJ Hackett bungy HQ on the Kawarau River. We spent a further night at the Lakeview holiday park in Queenstown, and then moved on to our final NZ adventure for this campaign, a day on the Routeburn track...next post.

South of Wanaka, as one ascends the Crown range,
is Cardrona, home of the famous bra fence, now known
as Bradrona; about which I have posted before...

Sunset through our windshield, at the Crown Ridge overlook...

Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown in the distance

AJ Hackett was the originator of bungy and related
crazy things, and his first site was the old Kawarau
bridge, now a certified NZ historic site; the bungy center
too is there and permits overnight parking by self-
contained campers; the center, about which I have
blogged before, seemed a shadow of its former self...
still recovering from COVID, I'd guess

Before checking in at the holiday park, we stopped in Frankton,
where most of Queenstown's growth of the past decade seems to 
have been...especially retail and new housing; in the distant past,
2009. it was little more than the intersection between the main
highway and the road to the airport; in the background are the
Remarkables, the mountain range that is Queenstown's famous
scenic backdrop

Next morning, after a night of moisture, from our campsite...
the Remarkables, like other mountains, are always better to
look at with a little snow

The alpenglow, a few nights later, isn't bad either

In old Queenstown, it's not unusual to hear voices above...the shrieks
and screams of passengers getting their money's worth of thrills aboard
the tandem parasails launched from the Skyline center