Wednesday 10 - Went to Arrowtown in the morning, catching the 9.45am shuttle. It used to be a gold mining town, but now has about 2000 inhabitants. Went to see the restored Chinese gold miners settlement. They have restored many of the houses, which are little more than tiny shacks. They also gave information about the miners lives - they had really hard lives and had to put up with a lot of prejudice, especially in the 1880's. After this I went for a walk a...

Left Wanaka at 8.15am on the Atomic shuttle. Arrived in Queenstown just after 9am and went to by hostel which was called Scallywags. It was a small hostel and my room was the nicest I've had - the bunks were really cool. The owner Evan was a bit strange, not the sort to tolerate fools, and he seemed to think that most backpackers were, so I don't know why he ran a hostel. The view from the hostel was incredible - I could see Lake Wakatipu, The Remarkables and ...

Monday 8 -Today was my full day Lord of the Rings tour. Left Wanaka at 9am and headed towards Queenstown and Deer Park Heights. I must apologise now for the hundreds of photos I've taken and therefore have posted on this site. But I was having fun! Deer Park Heights was mainly used to film the battle scenes in The Two Towers between the Rohan riders (and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli) and the Orcs and Warg. On the way into the park we stopped to feed donkeys, ...

6/11 - Left Fox to go to Wanaka. Caught the Intercity bus which took about 5 hours. The drive went past lovely scenery. On the left was lush rainforest and on the right was the coast and the Tasman sea. The driver stopped at a couple of nice spots to take photos. These included Knights Point, where there was also a seal colony, Ship Cove. Stopped at a salmon farm for a break and then left the west coast and moved inland. We had lunch at a small place called...

Today I walked to Lake Matheson which is close to Fox glacier. Again the weather wasn't that great and it started to rain later in the day. On a nice day you can get a fantastic view of the lake with Mt Cook and Mt Tasman in the background. But alas it was not to be. Didn't want to go for anymore walks in the rain, so went back to my hostel and spent the rest of the day and evening watching videos, and got a take out.