Moving on To Cromwell

After a relaxing down day on Monday, we headed out for another hike, this time along the shore of Lake Wanaka. We had a great 8km walk along the lakeside before heading back into town to finally take a look at the Wanaka Tree. This is lone tree growing in the lake about 20 meters from the shore and for a simple tree, it gets a lot of attention. It’s a major tourist stop for bus (coach) tours in NZ and there’s always lots of people around snapping pics of the famous tree. So here are a few of ours…

We enjoyed our time in the area and are finding that the one week stays are giving us enough time to explore and get to know these beautiful places at least a bit better.

Wednesday, we were off for Cromwell, where we stayed for a couple of nights. Only about an hour away, but it gave us an opportunity to visit Queenstown without paying Queenstown prices. Queenstown is not a cheap place to stay. Cromwell has been around since the Otago gold rush in the 1860’s. As the gold rush slowed, Cromwell transitioned into a service area for the expanding stone fruit and wine orchards. In the 1980’s, the Clyde dam construction created Lake Dunstan. This meant that nearly a third of buildings in Cromwell had to be relocated due to the flooding required for the lake. Some of the downtown buildings were saved and are now protected in the historic precinct in Cromwell. There is lots of new construction, lots to do in the area, so well worth a short stop for us. The day we got here, we had planned visit to the conservation area that hold the remanents of some stone huts that the Chinese immigrants built during the gold rush. Just outside of Clyde, the trail wound down and around Conroys Gorge. About a 5 km hike through some pretty amazing scenery.

We spent the better part of day in Queenstown wandering around, checking out the stores, watching the other tourists, and generally appreciating how much Queenstown has changed since we were last here in the late 90’s. We took a short drive out towards Glenorchie to find the Ithilien Lookout, famous for one of the scenes in the Lord of the Rings when Frodo, Sam, and Gollum looked out to the gates of Mordor and where Sam first saw Oliphants! There are a number of tour companies offering Lord of the Ring Tours in the area and while we were there, we saw 4 groups being guided to the lookout. The area also gives you a great view of the Remarkables. They got the name Remarkables by Alexander Garfield, a land surveyor in the 1850’s who noted that their peaks align with true north and true south.

Off to Te Anau next so out of Otago and into Southland. Not much further to go now until we reach the south end of NZ