To get back east of the Southern Alps you have to drive through the Haast Pass notorious for rock falls, landslides and closure but not snow as it is actually the lowest pass through the Southern Alps. The morning of the journey it was chucking it down. It proved to be a more dramatic pass than Arthur's and we only got stopped twice, once for them to clear a minor landslide and the second time for roadwork's for a previous landslide.

We did stop for a cuppa but didn't dare open the door as poor Sid got besieged by Sandflies. Only the females bite (a very nasty bite which hurts like hell and then itches for days as Peter can confirm. I told him to put Germaline on them but he wouldn't listen) but as you can't tell them apart we weren't taking any chances. On the other side of the pass was our destination a small town called Wanaka on the edge of NZs 4th largest lake with Mt Aspiring in the background. On arrival the sun was shining and it was quite warm and so far no Sandflies.

Wanaka may end up being my least favourite place because it has not one but three museums with cars. One even has a brewery on the site. Peter thinks this place is great- I wonder why! They are as follows: - Warbirds and Wheels which houses the private collection of Sir Tim Wallis who got his money by sorting out the noxious deer problem NZ had. They now farm Deer as venison burger is very popular. As the name suggests the museum included fighter planes and classic cars and a coffee shop for me. I thought my luck was in when the second on our list, the New Zealand Fighter Pilots museum was closed (it had been closed for 3 years). But no my luck was not in as we caught site of another museum (not on my list) the WWII museum. This appeared to be closed but there was a telephone number which Peter called and the rather odd Swiss owner came to open up. I wish he hadn't as it was a bit weird. Inside there were no displays as such but just a couple of replica planes that he had made. He then tried to sell us a cap with the museum logo. The third museum was the National Transport and Toy museum, another private collection of rare and unusual cars, aircraft, trucks, motorcycles, fire appliances, military vehicles, tractors, model aircraft, Meccano sets, dolls, china dolls, smurfs, Barbie dolls, teddy bears and anything else you can think of. It was basically a hoarder's paradise. After this we both needed a rest and a drink so we headed back to town.

I should just mention that the night before the museum visits we went to the local picture house. A very sweet place with just one screen. Around 75% of the seats had been replaced with domestic sofas, aircraft seats, a Morris Minor and an Austin Seven. Half way through the film just stopped and everyone went out to get drink and food which included homemade cookies and pizza (you could smell them cooking while you were watching the film), which they proceeded to bring back into the auditorium. A young man then came in and asked the audience if we were ready for him to resume playing the film.

The next day we headed over to Queenstown via quaint Arrowtown which is an old gold mining town with around 70 original buildings (now touristy shops and coffee cafes). We stayed here a night has Peter found the only decent pub in NZ, the Fork and Tap, that actually sold hand pulled beer that wasn't just above freezing. The place also had some character and no TVs, a real find.

The gold rush all started with one William Rees who was one of the first Europeans to establish a sheep farm in nearby Queenstown area. One of his workers stumbled upon gold in 1862 in the Arrow river. Rees tried to keep it a secret (I wonder why?) but by the end of 1862, there were 1,500 miners camped down on the Arrow River. 12,000 ounces (340 kgs) of gold were carried out on the first gold escort in January 1863. Rees turned his farm into a hotel (cunning business man) but his land was declared a goldfield and was taken from him for 10,000NZ dollars. As the gold became harder to extract many left for the other fields on the West Coast. Arrowtown and other nearby towns suffered economically and so the local government decided to invite Chinese miners to come to the area. Why Chinese you might ask? Well during the early 1800s many Chinese from the Guangzhou province in Southern China were not having a good time because of high unemployment, overpopulation and the effects of the Opium Wars. Many headed for goldfields in Californian and Australia to make money to send home to families.

Queenstown is the home of commercial bungy jumping but believe me when I say that is definitely not why we went there. The history of bungy jumping is interesting. In brief it started with the people of Vanuatu in the Pacific who for some reason threw themselves from huge towers with nothing more than a few vines tied to their feet. This apparently inspired the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club (founded in the mid 1970's by some obviously bored university students) to try a few experimental jumps in 1979. A Mr A J Hackett saw a video of this group in action and tried it with latex rubber cords and in the 1980's he opened the bungy jump site at the Kawarau Bridge just outside Queesntown. We did pass a shop with his name on but was still not tempted.

The first afternoon the sun was out and Queenstown looked beautiful by the side of yet another very large crystal clear lake. We had heard of the Fright Factory that was supposed to be very good so in we went.You basically walk along a very narrow corridor, blacked out and following paced out red LEDs and along the way real people jump out at you, grab you, touch you, whisper in your ear and a few other things. A modern version of the fairs haunted house. It was the fact that it was real people that made it so good. Peter had to lead the way as I had my eyes closed the whole way round.

We went to Queenstown to visit Skippers Canyon ( more specifically Skippers Canyon road) a historic and scenic gorge, some 22 kilometres in length, just north of Queenstown, and to go jet boating on the Shotover River, one of New Zealand's richest gold bearing rivers (flowing through the canyon) which was named by Farmer Rees. Skippers Canyon Road is one of New Zealand's most scenic roads and is deemed one of NZs most dangerous roads, now you understand why Peter wants to go there. Unluckily it is also the only road in NZ for which Rental car insurance is not honoured so unluckily Sid was left home while we went on a tour. The road is mostly one lane, narrow, windy and steep with sheer drops of several hundred metres. Just the excitement one needs! The road, 16.5 miles of it, was built mostly by Chinese labourers, between 1883 to 1890, to improve access for miners to the Upper Shotover diggings. It was carved and blasted right out of the solid rock using only black gunpowder and hand drills (you can still see the drill holes). It was considered to be an engineering miracle and it doesn't look much different today than when it was first created. It was certainly a good drive which Sid could not have done. At the end we hopped onto an aluminium speed boat that only draws 75mm with giant Chevrolet V8 engine. It didn't hang around as it shot up the Shotover river at 50KMH and back down stream at 90KMH. As though that wasn't enough he did 360degree spins at several points. I opened my eyes on a few occasions to see sheer rock faces very close. Why do I let Peter talk me into these things? After this we visited the gold miner's museum with lots of old implements left behind when the diggings were abandoned. We then had a go at gold panning (well Peter did as I was still recovering from the speed boat) and found 6 pieces (very tiny ) of gold.