Blogs from Te Anau, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 10

Today I move south from Wanaka to Te Anau, more coach travel but I think I'm getting used to it.  The journey from Wanaka to Queenstown is uneventful, i'm picked up at my hostel door and driven through the rapidly decreasing rolling hills, past  slopes covered in vinyards again, the straight rows running off onto infinity, the vines are once more protected by fine white netting, in comparisson to yesterdays fluffy balls today is a covering of spider silk enveloping the vines like the morning dew on cornish gorse. I have a 2 hour stop over in Queenstown before my next bus and I plan to explore the town and have a little lunch, within 30 feet of the bus I'm pleased I made the decission to stay in wanaka with it's cool chilled atmosphere, everything ... read more

a beautiful drive down to tuatapere... day one: drove along the SH6 from westport to Haast left at 10:45 am...arrived 19:00pm jeff drove the entire way as i am still learning how to drive standard....(so far i can start from stop without stalling 50% of the time)... the first 100km of this drive is very beautiful and windy. lots of limesone cliffs and tropical palms along the west coast. the communities along this coast were established in the gold then coal -mining days. now they are largely tourism based. we stopped in punakaiki at the pancake rocks and blowholes... had lunch at a little cafe in greymouth...and then we headed south towards the glaciers. we took a short break to walk around franz josef glacier and then we continued onto the Fox glacier region. we heard ... read more

Te Anau es una ciudad chiquita, entramos ahi para dormir y al otro dia seguir viaje! ... read more

Well, after two weeks of life on the farm, we found ourselves in need of a little...escape. A little mountain scenery. A little natural wilderness. Compound that with the fact that New Zealand basically shuts down for several weeks over the holidays - I mean literally SHUTS DOWN - even the banks! We've found ourselves in the unfortunate position of needing to set up everything (i.e., auto payments for our apartment from the bank, turning our power on, purchasing a bed, which we still haven't done yet, searching for jobs)...but alas, nothing is open, everyone is on holiday, and all is quiet on the western front. So, we decided...if everyone else is on holiday, why not us, too? Certainly nothing else to do in the meantime that's of any real use (who needs jobs or a ... read more

This morning we got up and headed over to go on the Shotover Jet. We put on some splash jackets and life jackets. There were only 7 of us on the boat. It was overcast and cold out, and even colder on the boat! They go really fast down and up the river and drive really close by to the canyon walls and through the shallow parts of the river. It was fun, but freezing out. Especially the first run down the river. My ears got cold, my face was freezing and my forehead went numb. It felt like I had the worst ice cream headache! After awhile though it felt warmer because we moved to a less cold part of the river. Also the handlebars on the boat are heated, which was really really nice. ... read more