Queenstown: Lakeside Walk, Arrowtown

Again, I haven’t got time for many words today. This morning, we went for a long walk mostly beside the shore of Lake Wakatipu, the lake Queenstown is on, in the morning. In the afternoon, we visited Arrowtown — although, the latter wasn’t part of the plan.

We booked a great excursion for the afternoon. The plan was to be flown in a small (eight passengers, I think) plane through the mountain passes leading to Milford Sound, which is supposed to be a beautiful fjord. In Milford Sound, we would have had a two-hour cruise before flying back.

When we made the booking, the concierge warned us it could be cancelled due to the weather. He told us to check with him about 15 minutes before the tour company was supposed to pick us up at our hotel. Unfortunately, the winds were too strong. The tour company cancelled the excursion.

Instead, we took a bus to Arrowtown. Arrowtown, which is close to Queenstown, used to be a gold-mining town until the gold was mined out. I think the primary industry there these days is tourism.

Arrowtown has a cute main street, a small museum of local history, and a walk beside the Arrow River (which isn’t much more than a creek).

There are also some reconstructed buildings from an old Chinese settlement there. (Several Chinese came to Arrowtown during the gold rush to try to make their fortunes.) The buildings the Chinese immigrants lived in back in the day were tiny. There’s a picture below with a real, live human standing beside it to give a sense of scale.

Back in Queenstown, there was a beautiful sunset over the mountains around Lake Wakatipu. There’s a picture of it below.