Ok, so first of all an apology, we’ve been slacking a little on the blog writing! I’m going to attempt to get you all up to date with what we’ve been doing! When we last wrote we were at mount cook, since then we’ve entered a new year and had so many adventures!
From mount cook we headed towards Queenstown in preparation for spending new year there. We drove past Queenstown towards Paradise(yes a real place and no we didn’t make it there!). The road towards Paradise was a stunning trip along side a lake! We stayed that night near Paradise in a beautiful campsite called Kinloch. Tiff even braved the lake and went for a dip, she’s a little insane if you ask me, it was freezing!! The next day we headed back into Queenstown, we saw the first bit of traffic since arriving in New Zealand! Queenstown was obviously the place to be at New Year)of course everyone had heard we were going to be there!) We had a really chilled out day, partly due to a mix up at our campsite and the lack of a space for us, but that was sorted! We headed into town in the evening for a Ferg Burger for dinner(they are amazing famous burgers! Very yummy) then we met up with our Belgium friends that we spend Christmas with! We found a good spot on the beach and watched the fireworks to see in the New Year! It was great to spend the evening with old friends! New Years day was a beautiful day, clear blue skies and everything. So of course we took the opportunity for a bit of sunbathing! (don’t mean to make you all jealous!) Then headed out for dinner and onto Freedom Church. The next day we had a chill out day (because we hadn’t done that enough??!) And went for cocktails in the evening, not just any cocktails though, ones they serve in teapots! Incredible! Me and Tiff have decided we could do it better though and now have a great plan for a new business adventure if therapies don’t work out! So after a little New Year holiday from travelling we went on a trip to Skippers Canyon. It was a very cool day, you get taken to Skippers Canyon which is down a very narrow steep windy gravel road, not for nervous people! Then once there we had a jet boat ride through the canyon! Very exciting- not for the faint hearted!
We drove to Te Anau that evening, which is in the Fiordlands. We booked ourselves on to lots of tours for the next few days! The next day we drove up the Milford road towards Milford sounds. On the way up we stopped at Key point, which was a 3 hour walk up a mountain! It was a pretty steep climb but the views from the top made it worth while. It was just incredible, we found ourselves surrounded by mountains and incredible views! And probably the most randomly placed toilet I’ve ever seen! We woke the next morning to heavy rain, and headed out on a cruise on Milford sound, despite the rain the sound(which is not a sound at all but a fiord) was spectacular! And possibly more so due to the rain. The rain had created amazing waterfalls everywhere, I can’t describe the beauty of it. Luckily that evening on returning to Te Anau it was a lovely day! The following day we treated ourselves to a long overdue haircut! So now we have gorgeous hair again! And in the afternoon headed to the glow worm caves. The caves were really quite beautiful with lovely waterfalls. And the glow worms are crazy, it’s so weird that it’s natural, it’s like someone has filled the cave with fairy lights! But I do have to say both of us were a little scared but sitting in a boat in the pitch black- I just realized I failed to mention that! Yes you have to sit in a boat in the pitch black to view the glow worms!
Our final day in Te Anau we went to doubtful sound, for a lovely contrast we had a beautiful day on doubtful sound. Doubtful sound is so remote you have to take a boat across a lake for an hour followed by a 20min bus journey to reach the sound. But this adds to it’s incredible beauty, it’s so quiet and untouched. We had an amazing day out of the sound, to be surrounded by such beauty is just amazing. We also had a trip down into an underground power station on the way which was very impressive! The whole thing was under rock, amazing how they managed to build it.
