New Zealand

Jason and I had a great time touring New Zealand! We spent 7 days there, but we probably could have spent an entire month.

Click on this link to see where all the photos are located - PHOTOS FROM NEW ZEALAND

Day 1 – Christchurch:
We arrived in Christchurch on Saturday night around midnight and went immediately to our hotel. When we woke up Sunday morning, we decided to formulate our plan for the week and started calling around to the companies that rented campervans on the South Island. After deciding to pick up a campervan later that afternoon and stay one more night in Christchurch, we headed out to the city center of Christchurch where we saw a really cool Anglican church, walked around a botanical gardens and milled around a market on a day that couldn’t have any better weather. Once we were done, we headed back toward the airport to pick up our campervan, have dinner, and go back to the hotel.

Day 2 – Christchurch to Franz Josef Glacier:
On Monday morning, we loaded our belongings into the campervan and headed to the grocery store to stock up for our adventurous week. From Christchurch we drove through Arthur’s Pass toward the western side of the South Island – stopping along the way for a few of Jason’s famous picture taking side trips. The closer we got to the glacier, the more overcast the weather became and we arrived there around dinner time. We checked into the holiday park and made our first campervan meal of the week- spaghetti with meat sauce!

Day 3 – Franz Josef Glacier to Wanaka:
On Tuesday, we got up and decided to head toward the Franz Josef Glacier. About the time that we arrived there it was really starting to rain, but we braved the rain and headed down one of the walkways to at least view the glacier. We didn’t think that we had enough time to take a half day walk our on the glacier and drive further toward Queenstown, so a view of the glacier was good enough for us. It was truly a fascinating sight and more interesting to see how the glacier has retreated over the past 100 years or so. Once we finished at the Franz Josef Glacier, we headed up the road to the Fox Glacier where we repeated the same steps. This time we seemed to be able to get a little closer to the glacier until we reached the river that is caused by the water melting off the glacier. I decided not to brave crossing it but Jason hopped across the rocks and water and took a few closer photos of the glacier. It most likely would have been much easier to get closer if the rain coming from the sky wasn’t also contributing to the river coming from the glacier. From here we drove for the rest of the day, stopping off in a few beautiful places for some photos and finally stopping in the town of Wanaka for the evening.

Day 4 – Wanaka to Te Anau:
On Wednesday, we drove from Wanaka to Queenstown where Jason had to check out some of the bungy jumping sites. I really think that he wanted to try it but I think that I somehow successfully talked him out of it. The place that we stopped off at was the first place in the world to do commercial jumping from a bridge. As we drove further past Queenstown to Te Anau, the weather vastly improved and we set up a nice picnic lunch on the edge of a lake also overlooking the mountains. It was such a beautiful setting, I could have just sat there in the cool sunlight for the rest of the day! But we drove onward toward Te Anau where we set up a tour for Doubtful Sound in Fjordland National Park for Thursday and also booked a tour of the Glowworm Caves for later Wednesday night. The Glowworms were very cool. They took you on a high speed boat across the lake, where you got off the boat on the other side and then walked into a cave where the opening was only about 3 feet high. Once past the first 10-15 yards of the opening, the cave opened up and you walked along the inside next to the water rushing through. Making your way into the cave, you finally reached another point where they loaded us into a smaller boat and onto the water in the cave. The boat took us further into the cave where they no longer had lights and the glowworms were all over the ceiling like a mass of green stars. It was very cool and if someone in the boat would make a noise, the glowworms would sense it and some of them would become more dim. It was a very neat experience!

Day 5 – Te Anau and Doubtful Sound:
On Thursday we met up with the tour that we had booked to take us out to Doubtful Sound. Doubtful Sound is one of 2 of the popular fjords to visit in Fjordland National Park and the only one that we had an option to book because the other one (Milford Sound) was inaccessible because of an avalanche blocking the only road to and from the Sound. I’m not sure if I’d hate to be stuck on the other side of the avalanche or not…. Stuck out in the beautiful country might not be a reason to complain! Anyway, we took a boat across a lake and then boarded a bus that would take us on a tour of an underground power plant and finally on to our boat that would tour Doubtful Sound. The weather out in the sound was off and on rain but there were enough clear times that we were able to stand out on the deck of the boat and get some really great photos. The really cool thing about this area was that it was a cool climate rain forest, so while the scenery and rainforest looked like it could have been in Hawaii, it was no where near as warm as Hawaii would be! Truly amazing! We even saw snow when we were on the bus crossing over the mountain that the power plant was dug into.

Day 6 – Te Anau to Geraldine:
On Day 6, we decided to drive the route from Te Anau back to Christchurch that went past Mt. Cook which is the tallest peak in Australasia. If we had time to stop or the weather looked good enough to make it to the mountain, we might try to drive near it. But, as usual, we got a late start (trying to wake up Jason is just a losing battle). Plus, as we drove along, we had to stop for lots more photo opportunities – my favorite being the river that we photographed a group of people doing some river surfing. I think that if I had been able to participate in that, we might have stopped longer to try it out. As we traveled along, we decided that it was too icy and too late to try to make it to Mt. Cook so as the sun was getting lower we stopped at a couple of lakes that are such an amazing color of blue we could barely believe our eyes that they were real. We read in the guide book that these lakes were this color because the rocks surrounding them left a sediment in the lake that caused the light to reflect in such a way that caused this amazing color. I think that we could have built a house right next to either of these lakes and just consider it paradise found (well, except that Jason would probably eventually realize that it was a little too cold there for his liking!). We continued on to a very small town called Geraldine about 2 hours outside of Christchurch and found our Holiday Park to stay at for the evening. It was small, not crowded at all and probably the nicest facilities of all the places that we stayed.

Day 7 – Geraldine to Christchurch:
On Friday, we got up a little earlier than usual and made our final packing to head back to Christchurch and to the airport. The weather was amazing and it was fun to watch the very mountainous country turn into mostly farmland again.