The Cardrona drive

When Sonia and I traveled through New Zealand, we traveled through a bunch of small towns. To get to these towns sometimes involved traveling along dirt roads and going up the sides of mountains. One place in particular called Cardrona was an old miners town. To get to Cardrona, we had to drive up this one lane dirt road. The road went up the side of the mountain across 12-14 steep switchbacks. It was a pretty cool drive. As we kept getting higher and higher in altitude, we were able to see the Queenstown valley and lakes. It was amazing. We were also able to see Lake Huges and Arrowtown. That was where Sonia and I were married. Once we made it to the top of the mountain, we drove into a plateau and then the road changed to a 2-lane paved highway. We still had to go over and down a pass, but the scary part was over. Anyway, we finally made it to Cardrona. This tiny town was pretty cool, the main attraction here is a really famous hotel called the Cardrona Hotel. The Hotel is really old and has lot of little antique knick knacks and old newspaper articles of events that had happened in the past. In the front there is an antique car that was used in the past to drive guest around the town if they needed a ride somewhere. I'll tell you though, they can serve up one good breakfast!! It was so good, I ordered two. It was a typical country breakfast; the usual ham, bacon, hash browns and eggs. The eggs were cooked sunny side up and the hash browns were seasoned and tasted really good. We sat in the garden in the courtyard of the Hotel. There were so many different flowers and bushes, the grass was really green and the weather was absolutely perfect that day. The view, weather and food was so pleasant that we didn't want to leave. There was a local cat that was making his rounds around the garden searching for food, or should I say walking past everyone begging for food. For all you who know me, can bet that when the cat got to me that he got some food. I know it's bad to give cats people food, but he really wanted some and I just love cats so he got a little bacon. After we ate we walked out to the front and were taking some photos when Danish this lady on a bicycle rode up. She had 2 bags strapped to the back plus a sleeping bag. She came up to us and asked if we could take a picture of her in front of the old car. After the photo, we ended up talking to her for a few minutes; she was traveling across New Zealand on her mountain bike. Apparently, she does this twice a year. She would bike about 8-10 hours day. I asked her, "why do you travel like that?"
"Because there is so much to see in New Zealand and you can't see it all driving 60 mile/hour."
"Well, I hope you know what is ahead of you, because we just drove down some steep hills."
"Oh, I know, that is my favorite part."
"Well good luck and be careful." Then we were on our way, next stop Wanaka. I will leave that story for another day.