Chris continued his adventures this morning with anoadventistarly start – the Nevis Swing.This is apparently the largest swing in the world. You start by being suspended 160m above the canyon floor and on your release, you find yourself accelerating through the canyon at a crazy speed of up to 150kph+ in a 300m arc. There are apparently over 70 ways in which you can be attached to the swing – each rated in a series of measures using ‘underpants’ as a unit of fear or exhilaration. These include – Forwards, Backwards, Tandem, Truck’n trailer, Back2back, Honeymoon & many more. For the life of me, I can’t understand why, when God gave us solid earth to stand on (perhaps, except for Christchurch), you would want to hang by a piece of string so high up from the ground and then swing backwards and forwards until someone hauled you in again..
Anyway, while Chris was undertaking this activity, Cathy and
the girls came over to our apartment and we cooked eggs and bacon for breakfast. A real hit with both of them, but apparently, I undercooked the eggs because the yolks were still runny.
Chris was dropped of at the road junction to Arrowtown and we picked him up there on our way to visit this little old gold mining town. The main street has a very quaint streetscape and a lot of the old buildings now house tourist shops and restaurants. We pottered around for a few hours and had lunch in a nice little cafe.
During the high point of the gold rush the population of Arrowtown rose to over 7,000 people and it then became the center of a larger municipality, which covered the new settlements of Macetown, Skippers and Bullendale (today only ghost towns). Arrowtown was constituted as a borough in 1867 and became part of the Queenstown-Lakes District in a local government reorganisation of 1989. The population once fell to as low as 200 people in the 1960s before it regained some popularity again..The town has seen considerable growth and the population now exceeds 2500.
On our way back to Queenstown we drove up the road to the top of Coronet Peak – the famous ski resort just out of town. There are some magnificent views across the valley that extends from Arrowtown right around to Queenstown.
Our final activity for the day was to stop for a coffee at Arthur Point, from where the Shotover Jets operate. They looked just as exciting as yesterday!
