Crystal Mountain [Day 6]

Where can you see a wonderful collection of crystals, feed animals, ride a pony and go on a roller-coaster all at the same place?

Crystal Mountain of course!

We walked into a crystal shop to rival all others and the girls, who both collect gem stones (future geologists perhaps or treasure hunters?), were in their element. They chose six of their favourite for $10 (thanks Daddy!) before heading down a lift to a depth of 80 metres (ahem – it said so on the lift, so it must be) below the ground. In the crystal mine museum we viewed a magnificent collection of gems from around the world.

After being totally dazzled by crystals in the mine we came back up into daylight to be greeted by an absolute scorcher of a day. It was nearly lunch time and the cafe looked fabulous, but Charlotte and Sophie had their eyes set on something more exciting… a roller-coaster!

It seemed really bizarre to find a little roller coaster set amongst farmland, emus, goats and chickens. But there it was, plonked right down in the middle of the farm. You could almost imagine someone saying, ‘You know what this place needs? A roller-coaster! Yup, I think I’ll get myself one. Good as gold. It will be totally awesome mate!’.

The only thing the ride was lacking was someone to flick the on switch. Being mid-week, out of season, and in term time, Crystal Mountain was pretty quiet. So quiet that we were told, ‘They’ll be a fella around the farm somewhere to operate the roller coaster. Just tell him you want a go.’ Love it – typical laid back Kiwi style 🙂

So whilst we waited for a guy to turn up we wandered round the farm, with Sophie in her element talking to and feeding the animals – she so needs to be living on a farm!

By the time we’d run out of animal feed, with Sophie saying to the animals, ‘Sorry mate, no more food, it’s all gone,’ we had found our man for the roller-coaster ride.

The girls really did have an awesome ride. They also got to experience the thrill from the front and the back – double the thrills!

And after all the excitement they got to ride around the farm on a little train too and Sophie enjoyed a ride on a beautiful pony called Gypsy. Alice thought the pony was pretty amazing too and looked at Gypsy with a look of, ‘What is this?!’. If Alice could talk she would have been full of questions!

A late lunch was finally devoured and the girls squeezed in another lucky turn on the roller-coaster and asked for a few more pics in front of their favourite gems before we got on the road home to Brown’s Bay. We made a pit-stop enroute for a quick game of mini-golf in Albany – because we just don’t know when to stop!