South Island - Take 2...

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Visiting parents presented the perfect excuse to revisit the beautiful South Island. This time we took a slightly different route to fit in some of the places we missed last time. Our journey began with a slightly scary descent between the mountains into Queenstown. From there we headed out to Lord of the Rings country for a horse trek around the mountain flats, crossing rivers galore and soaking up the amazing scenes.

The weather was not always in our favour so our trip to Mount Cook (the highest in NZ) was a bit of a washout - we never actually caught a glimpse of the great Mt Cook but did capture some "wow" moments en route. Our 2nd drive up the west coast presented identical weather to last time - rain, rain, rain - so we kept the pedal to the floor and continued to pastures new.

After stopping off for a boat tour around the Abel Tasman National Park we carried on over to the North Eastern corner of the South Island, stopping off for a night in THE most dodgy pub before taking a beautiful drive down the East Coast to Kaikoura. Can't say I've seen too many places with sunshine and gorgeous blue sea perfectly presented with the backdrop of towering, snow-capped mountains.

The time had come to head on back to Christchurch and say goodbye to the South Island before flying home to Auckland - no doubt I'll be back again some day...

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