A Day in Arrowtown – Day 133

Today we are going to be stepping back in time as we visit Arrowtown. We are going to show you where to take your granny when she comes to visit you in New Zealand.

Today we are heading to the picturesque town of Arrowtown and to make our way there from Wanaka are passing through the gorgeous Cardrona Valley surrounded by the beautiful Crown Ranges. The drive is amazing.

And we take a compulsory stop at the Cardrona Bra Fence, or Bradrona, as it is known nowadays. It’s had quite a history it used to be just a random fence people put bras on and the locals kept taking them down but now it is here for good. We have feasted our eyes on bras but we’re not leaving one behind today.

the drive through the Crown Range is absolutely stunning it features the beautiful tussock landscape of the Wanaka area and takes us all the way to the rugged mountainous landscape of Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. But before we hit Queenstown we have a little pitstop to do in Arrowtown.

Arrowtown is a quaint little village on the outskirts of Queenstown it is an old gold mining town and it holds on really hard to its heritage making it one of the best place to visit with your elderly family members like your granny. But since my granny’s not here, Laura will do and I’m gonna take her for a tour around Arrowtown.

Arrowtown is famous for being a gold mining town it was developed mostly during the gold rush era when gold was first discovered here in 1862 so we head over to the Lakes District Museum which has all these relics of the gold mining era as well as a few temporary art galleries.

And all around the town there is all these gold mining related stuff and we can’t help but play with some of them.

I have made no effort to find gold yet. You think gold’s gonna find you? I hope it does.

Moving on from the old gold mining days of Arrowtown we are making our way through the main street of the little township and one thing that really catches our eyes is a line up in front of a candy shop. Obviously this is something that’s going to be of interest to us so we are getting in in no time.

If we can’t convince you enough that Arrowtown is definitely worth a visit look around me right now.

There are so many amazing sweet surrounding us right now but the thing that really catches our eye are the fudge tastings which you can go an have for free. So we are tasting a variety of amazing things like the creme brulee M&Ms fruit nougart, cookies and so much more. I think we definitely have more than our fair share. Or at least Laura does cos I’m only getting a couple of tasters she takes everything even before I even see them.

My favourite was the M&Ms ones, which was yours. I liked the Creme Brulee that was the best seller but look at here I was sold. Just going with the crowd right? Yeah.

But now that Laura’s sweet tooth has been activated there is no stopping her and she heard there is a really famous ice cream shop somewhere in Arrowtown. It’s actually in one of the backstreets nearby the river so while she is so keen on getting her hand into some really good ice cream I’m really keen to go check out the nearby river so we make a compromise we get an ice cream and we’re gonna be eating it by the river.

Now that we’ve got our gigantic ice creams on hand we are making our way to the world famous Arrow river it used to be a hotspot for gold miners and apparently tons of gold have been found in this river but now it is more an area to do some 4×4 driving as well as kayaking. As we sit here alongside the river we see loads of tourists who have rented gold pans with disappointed looks on their faces but we are pretty happy to just be surrounded by this amazing scenery this whole valley has been carved by glaciers.

This river was also a filming location for the Lord of the Rings that scene where Arwen is like “if you want him you shall claim him”.

Now that we have finished nerding out by the river as well as filling our bellies with way too much sugar we are going to be slowly making our way back toward the camper van but we’re taking the time to wander around the other side streets of the town which feature over 70 different buildings left from the gold mining era.

So I now need to do an accept like the Queen? Yeah, go for it. One does not approve.

So now we’re getting back into the campervan and heading towards our final destination which is Queenstown, this is going to be our base for the next 10 days of epic adrenaline adventures so make sure to stick around.

But don’t miss tomorrow because we’re starting our 10 adrenaline filled days feature of Queenstown right here on this channel subscribe don’t miss it you want to be here with jet boat bungy luge rafting canyoning it’s gonna be just epic we are going to be knackered in 10 days are goin got be zombies just literally [zombie noise] roaming around. So don’t miss it for anything.