Thursday, November 29, 2007

South Island Walkabout...

After meeting up with my folks in Sydney it was on to Christchurch, to pick up our Motorhome and begin our travels around New Zealand. So far the scenery has been absolutely stunning, especially on the West Coast of the island, where in most places you have mountains on one side of you and beautiful turquoise ocean on the other side.

Highlights of our South Island tour so far include:


  • Learning to manuevre the 20+ft motorhome around some interesting mountain roads…



  • Sheep



  • Getting frozen in Dunedin – which is so much like Scotland, it even has the weather!



  • More sheep



  • Taking a boat trip around Milford Sound and feeling tiny against the sides of the fjord that are almost a mile high. Being taken almost under the largest waterfall, where they promise that the spray on your face helps you lose ten years!! I splashed it on a few times and am hoping to start high school when I get back to the states!



  • A few more sheep



  • Staying in the lovely lakeside town of Wanaka – for the brits, this also gave us a bit of a chuckle and an excuse to shout ‘ Are you from Wanaka?’ to any bad drivers on the road!



  • Yet more sheep



  • Taking the cable car up 1500ft to see the magnificent views over Queenstown and then screeching back down like a maniac in the luge ride.



  • Making my first bungy jump at the location of the first ever bungy jump, just outside queenstown. It was awesome.



  • Taking a helicopter ride over the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers and around Mt Cook and Mt Tasman, then landing in the snow, once the pilot finished eating his sandwich!



  • Bathing in the thermal springs at Hanmer Springs – phew what a smell…



  • More sheep



  • Whale watching (or whale waving as my mum liked to call it) in Kaikoura – and this time I actually saw whales, dolphins and seals.



  • Quite a few cows too



  • Visiting the Isabel winery in the Marlborough wine region



  • Driving in to the ferry terminal in Picton, where with a loud bang, the two 75 litre water tanks dropped off our motorhome ! Lucky we weren’t on one of those mountain roads… all we could do was laugh and wait for the engineer to arrive!



With a fixed motorhome, it’s on to the North Island for more adventures and hopefully a skydive…

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