Day 23 Te Anau to Queenstown

Bloody hell, when it rains here it really rains; hell of a storm last night with thunder and lightning and rain of course, but when I mentioned it to the guy at the service station he just said "oh that was only toying with you, I've seen 6" in an hour"!!! Beautiful double rainbow this morning though; it's not often you can see the complete arc of the rainbow in duplicate. We drove from Te Anau to Queenstown with the weather improving all the time so that when we got there it was a beautiful sunny day with clear blue skies and very little wind. Bit of an unexpected experience on the outside of Queenstown when we were asked to pull over to the side of he road for a big load coming through. Well this big load was a house on a trailer and I don't mean a mobile home, this was full size wooden bungalow which took up the entire road and managed to knock over some of the road markers in its wake; quite something to see I can tell you. We had to do a bit of a detour once we got to Queenstown as we were having problems with our auxiliary battery which runs all the power in the campervan. Didn't take too long fortunately, about an hour to test and replace the battery as one cell had gone down. We had booked a trip on the Shotover Jet which is a jet boat ride that goes down the Shotover River at break neck speed on 4" of water and excels at 360deg turns getting every one soaking; a real exhilarating experience as they dodge the boulders down the canyon and delight in soaking everyone. Apparently they do this all year round and in the winter the wind chill can get to around minus 25 deg and the spray turns to ice as soon as it hits your face. Think I prefer it in summer in plus 25 deg and sunny! We were planning on freedom camping tonight as Queenstown is supposed to be good for it but have ended up in another site although I think we are the oldest here as this one is full of tents, very small vans and backpackers. Well appointed though and quite new. No doubt another action packed day awaits us tomorrow.