Blogs from South Island, New Zealand, Oceania

MILFORD SOUND Milford Sound was previously named Milford Haven, by a Welshman of course, but was later renamed Milford Sound. They got that wrong as well, as it is not a “sound” (which is formed by water erosion) but a “fjord” (formed by glaciation). What’s in a name though, the whole area is beautiful. The scenery really starts at Te Anau and gets progressively better the closer you get to Milford Sound. (For anyone with campervans, there is no “freedom camping” along this stretch but there are lots of suitable Dept. Of Conservation sites along the way. When we got into the valley, we found out that from May on, during winter, it was a legal requirement that vehicles carried snow chains. Guess who didn’t have snow chains! They were an optional extra by the campervan ... read more

Thursday 3rd May Well it's time to move on again. We have spent 2 days here at Fox Glacier and are still coming down off our "high" yesterday after our walk on the upper reaches of the glacier. Just before we left we took a drive out (only 10mins) to Lake Matheson near Fox township to see the reflections. The travel guides and brochures say that it's the only lake which has the reflections of the two highest mountain peaks, Mt Cook and Mt Tasman, in the one scene. We again were lucky as there was no wind and the lake was like a mirror. Hope the pics reflect (ha ha) the beautiful view. You have to walk from the carpark thru a rain forest for about 25 mins to get there but it's worth it. ... read more

En route to Queenstown. The road down towards Queenstown was to drive on, with spectacular views all of the way, including mountains and some lakes. Centres of population are few and far between, and where existing, tend to be very small. How do people exist so far away from a city?? Whilst we took lots of photos, they would become boring in excess, and so have restricted the ones we published to just a few to give a flavour of the scenery. We did not manage to get to Queenstown by nightfall, and stayed overnight on a Department of Conservation site along the way. Next morning, on the road again until we got to: BUNGEE JUMPING – the origin of bungee jumping was claimed to be just north of Queensland and still exists as a ... read more

George (with commentary by Carla): On Tuesday we go to the airplane museum where there are lots of life-size model planes and some of them are flyable, and one of them is the only one of its kind left in the world. Some of the models are very odd. The drive down from Linkwater to Blenheim took us from fjords, inlets and wooded hills into the big country of fertile plains and vineyards. The New Zealand Royal Air Force has a base at Blenheim as there’s lots of flatness to land planes on. Peter Jackson the film director has also located his WW1 aeroplanes museum here, capitalising on the space available in the same way. It’s called the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre and it focuses on planes and flyers of WW1 both on the Allied and ... read more

Since we have had a few weeks in our new abode we thought we should put pen to paper so to speak and fill you in on our adventures of late. As we write we are a mere two weeks off the official start to winter. The weather has turned but nothing like the October/ November equivalent of the UK. There is snow on the mountains and the ski season starts in a few weeks but the days are still sunny. It only really gets cold when you come in from the sun. Enough of the weather... Our new cabin as we like to call it is in the Addington district of ChCh it backs onto the Crusaders Rugby stadium, we could not get any nearer. This is two star accommodation so is cheap but we ... read more