Day 6: In and near Queenstown

Today we did a counterclockwise loop out from Queenstown and back as shown in the map. We had an eclectic mixture of places to stop and activities. The first stop was the Kawarau Gorge suspension bridge. This bridge served as the only bridge across the gorge from 1880 until 1963, when a two lane modern bridge was built upstream. In 1988 it became the first place to offer commercial bungee jumping. Here is a picture of the bridge.

Here are a couple pics from under the bridge and someone about to bungee jump. Unfortunately the workers went on break so instead of waiting around for the next jump, we headed to our next destination.

Our next stop was Highlands Motorsports race track. They have a very nice paved track for racing a variety of full sized cars. They have experiences one can buy such as hot laps in a Lamborghini or a self drive in a open wheel single seater. These range from about $350 to $700. We opted for the much less expensive racing each other around a go cart track. It turned out Patrick was the fastest of us. Here are a few go carting pics.

One interesting feature at the track was their "Loo With a View." Each private bathroom had its own picture window with a view of the full sized car race track.

Our next stop near Wanaka at the top of the loop was the privately owned National Transportation and Toy Museum. It is jumbled collection of toys and cars motorcycles, airplanes, and anything and everything that can be collected such as souvenir spoons and Pez dispensers. If had Legos galore, giant Erector Set creations, Star Wars toy collections, and on and on. It is housed in seven large buildings. It has 650 vehicles, 23 aircraft, 100,000 toys and thousands of miscellaneous items. Gerald Rhodes began collecting in the 1950's and the museum opened in 1994. The museum is a hoarders delight. It is just an astonishing collection of toys and vehicles, all arranged in a hodge podge in large buildings. It's just amazing for its sheer scope of stuff. Here are just a few pictures, which do not do justice to the plethora of things in these buildings.

After the exhaustion of trying to fathom and take in the collection at the museum we drove about 10 km to the town of Wanaka for coffee and pastry, sadly no scones were to be found. We left Wenaka and drove to the former gold mining town of Arrowtown. Today it is a very cute town that works hard to try and look like a mining town. We had an excellent dinner outside by the Main Street. Here are a few pics of the very quaint Arrowtown Main Street.

After dinner we drove back to Queenstown. It was a beautiful ride with lots of backcountry roads with lots and lots of curves. It was a very fun ride. Here are acouple of pics from the ride back to Queenstown.