Not much to report. It was a nice drive although the weather was cold and it started snowing. I stopped at one of the winneries and did their tour. Got shown the cave where they store all the wines and was patronised by a fasciscious callifornian old guy that worked their. Not impressed with him.
I stopped at a gold mine and did the gold mining tour which i planned to do earlier when i drove through but it was closed. This time it was open and i thought the tour would be pants. It actually turned out very good. A gunuine kiwi gold panner (he still does it now) told us all baout the properties of gold how its formed, the kind of rocks used to find it what golds used in etc. Very inetresting. Then we went and saw one of the rock crushing machines improited from britain (slough). finally we had a go at gold panning and i found 8 small flecks which i put in a vile of water (makes them look bigger). I did have a little bit of help from the tour guide.
We had a chat afterwards and he said I was very barve doing all this travelling thing. I am a bit waery of anyone who says I am ballsy or barve doing this as they again tend to want to get into your pants but this guy seemed genuine so we said goodby and I drove to wanaka.
Not impressed by the camp site but loved the town. Really beautiful almost like an alpine viallage. Had some food and basically went to bed.
Posted by alexd at August 11, 2004 03:33 AM