Back in New Zealand

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So I went back to New Zealand, this time with three other people in the same program as me to the South Island. We spent 10 days driving around the South Island in our four door Toyota Corolla. I narrowed all my pictures down to 1200 and I'm going to did my best to share the best ones with you.

Our journey started in Christchurch, spent that night there and started our trek to Akaora. It was a beautiful drive and when we got to the small town we hiked out on this little peninsula and explored. It was a bit chilly and windy, but the scenery we were surrounded with made it worth it. From there we drove through Arthur's Pass, by the time we got to this mountainy area it was dark, but with the moon light we could see the enourmous mountains we were engulfed in our tiny car. The roads were a bit icy and we had to stop for awhile when a on-coming semi could not make the steep incline. It was a nice little adventure and we made it to our little hostel in Hokitika late. We woke up to the beautiful beach, but it was far too cold to go for a swim, so we continued on our journey to Franz Josef for a glacier climb. The rain had started and we were debating if we should skip the glacier and head straight to Queenstown. We decided to wait out the rain and booked our glacier climb for two days later when the rain was expected to clear up. After spending most of the next day in our hostel since it was too miserable out we decided to take on the rain, and explore the town a little. We hiked in the rainforest surrounding the glacier. We awoke the day of our climb in a rush to actually make our trip because our alarm did not go off. During the rampage to pack, get dressed, and make lunches we realized that it was a beautiful day and for the first time saw the breathtaking mountains that surrounded our hostel. The glacier climb itself was well worth the wait. We trekked through rushing rivers and rainforests to the base of the glacier. We put on our crampons and followed our glacier guide as he axed out stairs, climbed under ice caves, and squeezed through crevaces. We ate our lunch high up on the glacier overlooking the river valley. It was quite the experience and I am going to have to do it again, maybe for a full-day trip.

Straight after our glacier climb, smelly and wet, we drove onward to Arrowtown. Arrowtown is a small town outside of Queenstown and we spent the night there since all the other hostels were booked. The next day we took scenic drives around Queenstown and Wanaka, including a little off-roading adventure in Glenarchy where much of the move Lord of the Rings was filmed. Two others joined us that night and we went snowboarding/skiing in Cardrona. The mountain was bigger than anything I had ever boarded on and again, the scenery was incredible. I think I spent more time taking pictures and catching my breath than I did boarding in powder. The next day, the three others I was traveling with went hang-gliding, and I was happy keeping my feet on the ground and being the photographer. They all had an amazing time and it was fabulous watching them run off a mountain.

Our last little trip was down to Te Anau to enjoy the fantastic fiords in Fiordland National Park. We did a day trip to Milford Sound - which is not actually a sound, it is a fiord. The difference is a sound is carved out by rushing water and a fiord is carved out by a glacier. Fiords are much more narrow and steeper. We went kayaking and it was incredible how close everything looked because of the steep mountain walls, but in reality it was much farther away and took a lot longer to kayak to a point. During our kayaking, we saw dolphins and seals, we hoped to see penguins, but we were a bit to early in the season.

That was the trip in a few paragraphs. We did drive around to the southern tip of the south island and took a scenic drive up the coast to make it back to Christchurch for our return flight.

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Photos

Peninsula
See that little strech of land in the lake that gets bigger, that's the peninsula we are hiking.

That's me with the orange unbrella on the bridge...
the day before we climbed the glacier, look how fast that river is flowing! I guess that's kinda hard to do in a picture.

I bet you never saw a picture like this...
hiking through a rainforest.

Crevace
It took awhile to understand what our guide was saying since they put more of an emphasis on the 'a'

We had no idea...
that we were about to crawl through a tiny ice cave.

Beach we stopped at...
with an amazingly reflective pond.

Trudging through the river...
that is flowing a little faster and higher than usual since the previous 2 days rain. At some points the river was up to my thighs.