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Published: January 9th 2008
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Hello again,
Following my sisters comments about my spelling I have decided to do this in word so I can use spell check !! Travel blogg does not have a built in spell check ! If only I had taken more notice at school maybe my spelling would be better.
We arrived back in Rangiora yesterday evening after our bust 2000 kms trip around the lower half of South Island. It is a cross between the Canadian Rockies & the Lake District with mainly better weather….but not always as you will read later.
I will keep this fairly brief or we will not have anything to bore you all with when we get back home.
We started our trip by heading south through Oxford ?? onto Sheffield ?? & then down to Lake Tekapo through the Southern Alps, we over dosed on scenery, why are the lakes back home not the same colour blue as out here, they would look a lot better, we then drove on to Omaru for our first nights stay. The kids enjoyed watching the penguins come ashore for the night, I re-acquainted a few old friendships from my time in the Antarctic
!
Day 2 we headed further south along the coast on highway 1 taking in the strange sights of the Moeraki boulders, these are great big round stones sat on the beach ! we ended up in Dunedin for our second night. Jane was happy as there were some shops to have a look around & the kids found a Burger King for tea. Everyone was happy as I found some beer to drink !
Day 3 took us further south to Milton before we turned west & headed through the alps again up towards Queenstown. On route we found a gold mine to explore, we had a go a panning for gold but as you can guess we did not find our fortune !!!
A few miles up the road we stopped at the Birthplace of Bungy. Oscar & I threw caution & common sense to the wind & threw our selves off a 47m high bridge into the gorge below. As they say when in Rome !!
Day 4 & 5 were spent exploring Queenstown up in cable cars & chair lifts, on the luge ( sledges on wheels ) back down again, round Lake
Wakatipu & round the shops again with Jane.
We also took a trip on the jet boat up a gorge, I was trying to find out where I had to leave my CV to become a jet boat driver, all you seem to need is a big right foot & very little brain to hurtle @ 60mph within inches of cliffs. ( I fit the bill on both cases there !)
Day 6 we set off to Franz Josef to see one of NZ’s huge glaciers, the problem was it was throwing it down of rain all the way up the coast. The west side of the island is covered in rain forest & gets about 6m of rain per year. Due to the rain & the cloud we did not see anything of the glaciers because the cloud was only about 20’ off the ground everything was shrouded in fog. This was a disappointment to us all as we were going to have a helicopter flight around the area with a landing on top of the glacier but there was no point..
Day 7 we continued a travels North along the coast up to Punakaiki to see
Why did we walk ??
Us at the top of the official steepest street in the world
Baldwin St Dunedin 1 in 2.68 I dont know why Jane stopped at the bottom ?? the pancake rocks & the blow holes. The blow holes are natural holes through the rock & as the tide comes in it is forced up through the holes & sprays out of the top like a geezer. Good move as we turned up at low tide !!! oh well cant win them all so we went to the beach for a few hours as it was low tide.
Day 8 took us back to the beach for a couple of hours before we set off back towards Christchurch through the alps following Arthur’s Pass. This again was an overdose of scenery as it passes through the middle of the alps passed loads of ski areas.
We had a couple of photo stops along the way & came face to face with wild Kia’s, these are wild parrot type birds ( like the one that tried to remove my finger at the wild life centre ), they are more destructive than a gang of hooligans & for some reason have a fetish for rubber. Oscar thought it highly amusing when one landed on top of a car next to ours, the couple whose car it was started taking photos
& commenting on how lovely it was……. They were not so happy when it started ripping the rubber seal out around the back window.
Right then that’s enough from me, we are going to Hanmer Springs for a couple of days tomorrow then flying off to North Island for a week or so. I will try to update when I can.
Have fun, we are.
The Kendalls
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