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Published: January 25th 2007
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hi!
South Island so far has been amazing - the landscape here is stunning, and even the weather has been good! For a place that is known for its insane amounts of rain (Milford Sounds being the 2nd rainiest place in the world with an average of 7 metres of rainfall a year) we've been incredibly lucky and had mostly sunshine.
After sea kayaking (where we saw loads of seals and pretty sights) we headed over towards the west coast, stopping on the way to do whitewater rafting (lots of fun!) and went on down to the glaciers. The drive along the way was full of interesting things - we ended up driving along a one-lane bridge (not uncommon here), except this one had trains going along it also...but the train signals had broken; we drove along the longest one-lane bridge in NZ (it had to have 2 stopping places!); and the highlight has been seeing a yellow-eyed penguin walking along the road (its out of the penguin seeing season here so this was even more exciting, also having passed lots of 'penguin on the road' signs we really didn't expect to see one.
The weather helped make
the scenery on the way down the coast look amazing, the beaches, sea and everything is just so beautiful!we stopped to look at many lakes and waterfalls, and also the Pancake rocks - which is alot of rocks that basically look like stacks of pancakes in the sea.
We made it down to the glaciers, where we walked upto and around Franz Joseph, but spent a day walking on Fox - lots of fun wearing crampons and using poles to stop yourself from falling off! From there we drove on down to Wanaka (through lots of goldmining and jade mining towns). Wanaka is a prety little town on the lakeside, just north of Queenstown. We met some lovely people at the campsite so had a good night out there! We visited the Toy & Trandport musuem (basically hangers full of junk!) and Puzzling World (it had a huge maze - took us 45 mins to complete, as well as lots of puzzles and illussion rooms (some of which were used in Lord of the Rings - making the hobbits look small)).
We then came on down to Queenstown where we met up with Emma and Ollie (uni friends
of mine), so again we had a good night out here (you can find happy hours here between 3-12pm if you barhop enough), and then together drove down to Milford Sound stopping at all the roadside views, lakes and walks all of which were stunning. The views are amazing! We had a great time with them, making the most of their lovely campervan (ie, the fridge, cooker, inside lights!) and got good use out of our boardgames! Milford Sound itself is spectacular. It's not actually a sound, it's a fiord as it's glacial, and has amazing glacial features (I may have got a bit over excited about these, but glaciers are by far the best geographical thing!). To get to Milford you have to take a very indirect route, but the scenery makes it worth it. To get to the Sounds themself you have to drive through an incredibly long (1km) and scary tunnel and then down a steep hill (our brakes didn't like this part too much). Coming back through the almost one-laned tunnel when the traffic lights are off (with our poor lights) and meeting another car is a daunting experience! On the water Jack and I took
a boat tour where we got some good photo's, got up close to the waterfalls (even drank from them), saw more seals, and lots of glacial features and rocks! One of the most amazing parts of the sounds is the rocks sides (very steep) - they are covered in trees, yet there is no soil on the rocks - the trees have grown out of the moss on the rockface. This means that when a tree falls down it tears loads of moss and green-stuff off the rocks leaving it bare in places - really interesting to see. On our way to the Sound we camped on the roadside, and on one night camping by a pretty lake we were lucky enough to see a comet in the sky - the sky was amazingly clear withthousands of stars so it made it all the prettier! The highlight of the Milford Sound's road was seeing a house being transported on the back of a truck - i'd heard it happened, but seeing it in reality was the funniest thing ever!! unfortunately the photo of it didn't come out well!
Emma & Ollie have now driven on up north of
Queenstown, and Jack & I are staying here for a few days. We did originally plan to do another 3 day walk, but the sandflies and rain possibility (it rains almost every 2nd day) put us off!
I've taken loads of photo's of the Sound and West Coast so I'll try and get them on soon!
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