Arrowtown and Glenorchy

When you stay in Queenstown there are two sites outside the city that every one recommends you to visit. That’s Arrowtown and Glenorchy. Of course, they both were on our list.

Early in the morning we left for Arrowtown. First of all we stopped by a Shotover River:

Arrowtown is a historic gold mining town. There are many well preserved buildings used by European and Chinese immigrants dating from the gold mining days of the town:

We liked how they use bicycles to decorate the town:

We stopped for the cup of coffee and saw this tree growing in the garden:

Looking at the fruit we thought they were pears:

Valda told us it was quince  Valda went inside the house and asked if we could have few fruit. We got two of them and the very same evening Valda cooked it for us. We used all the sugar we had at the hotel room and it took about three hours to get it cooked.

After Arrowtown we went to Glenorchy. First of all we had to ride by the beautiful Lake Wakatipu. Queenstown is located by this lake and the road to Glenorchy goes just by the shore:

We stopped at several overlooks along the route to Glenorchy alongside Lake Wakatipu. Lake Wakatipu is a brilliant blue colour due to the glacial sediments suspended in the water:

Finally we arrived to Glenorchy:

Glenorchy is a really small town, even for New Zealand, with only 200 residents.

To our big surprise we found about 10 or 11 trees growing in the water. With no big noise of advertising (remember the Wanaka Tree?) they grew there and no one even cared, except us, of course:

Glenorchy is also the gateway to Mount Aspiring National Park, a world heritage site where  Laima wanted to hike on famous Routeburn Track: While she was gone I looked around:

I also learned about history of New Zealand, Maori traditions, woods and creatures living there:

We had a picknic right there and next was the ride to Paradise. Stunning scenery from Glenorchy and Paradise has been featured in the films: The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Wolverine, and most recently the Hobbit and some others. We drove on Paradise Road that we knew was a dead end road but we expected to get to the real Paradise when we get to the end of the road.

Not so easy! Yes, we found a very small village called Paradise:

 

We passed the village and decided to go to the very end of the road, but it wasn’t simple:

Finally we had to stop:

Our desire to get to the Paradise was so big, that we left the car and decided to walk to the end of the road:

 

We walked and walked, we entered the woods, and the road didn’t get any better:

Finally we stopped the car coming back from the end of the road and asked how far the end was and was it worth walking. We turned around, walked back to our car and came back to Queenstown. On a way back we stopped few times to take photos of the most beautiful sites- hills covered with white spots of sheep:

Before going back to the hotel we stopped at the travel agency and booked one of our biggest adventures of this trip.

For the come back tomorrow!