The Land of Sheep- Chch to the Catlins

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Apologies for the lack of update in the last 2 weeks but man have we been moving!

We arrived in Christchurch (chch) 2 Saturdays ago at about 11pm and made our way via a shuttle with 9 american law students on exchange to our hostel. On the way the driver made sure to take us past 'the strip' along the river Avon. We found out later that Chch has about 400,000 people, but there had to be 2500 of them lined up to get into the bars (which apparently keep rocking until '7 or 8 in the morning') lining that street! Our law student buddies were very excited by this especially when they found out that they were living about 2 blocks down the road for the next 6 weeks but unfortunately not for us that night.

After getting settled we spent the next 2 days sorting out our plan of attack for the rest of NZ. Chch is quite a neat little city in the daylight also. All sorts of parks along the river and they seem to have saved all their older architecture. There's a restored tram that runs around the city center to show the sights (we walked it's track) and 'punting' tours along the river which winds like mad right through the middle of town.

Trying to get sorted in NZ was a bit of a challenge as we found out almost immediately that kiwi's and tourists seem to be in equal numbers. We were lucky though and managed to find a rental car on our 5th attempt! Hostels wern't much easier. The brochures say that there are 4.1M kiwi's and every year they have 2.4M tourists come through.... Crazy.

We picked up our car on the Tuesday and left Chch for the south. The first day of driving we went inland through Mt Hutt and Mt Cook on the way to Omaru. Mt Cook is the highest mountain in Australasia at something around 12000ft.

Following day we went from Omaru through the city of Dunedin (dun-E-den) to a backpackers/farmstay joint at Slope Point in the Catlins. Slope point is the southernmost point on the main islands of NZ and, from what we can tell, the Catlins are where the kiwi's keep at least half of their 40million sheep. It's absolutely wild to be able to look to the horizon and thousands of sheep dotting every hill!! Besides the sheep the Catlins are incredibly beautiful. Lot's of waterfalls and rainforest and some pretty cool rock structures and whatnot on the beaches. A couple that we walked to were a petrified forest (Curio Bay) and what are known as the Cathedral caves. Also made a quick hike into a Mcleans falls on the Thursday morning before we left for Te Anau and Fiordland.

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Photos

Christchurch
At Cathedral Square

Mt. Cook
Highest Peak in Australasia. From this view the Tasman Glacier is just to the right of Mt Cook and the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers begin on the back side of the peak to the left of Mt Cook.

Mike at Slope Point
He blends in well.

Terminal Moraine of the Tasman Glacier
The Tasman Glacier is located on the east side of Mount Tasman and Mount Cook.

Petrified Forest
Fossilized Forest from the Jurassic Period - the lines on the ground are fossilized trees - if you got up closer it was possible to see the grain of the wood and even the colour on some