June 25, 2007

Today we traveled from Christchurch to Twizel. It took us a little over 4 hours; it should have been shorter, but we took our time taking pictures along the way. This was at a café on the way to our B&B.

The lakes pictured include Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki.

June 26, 2007

We left our bed and breakfast in Twizel. Todd took some pictures of our room and the surrounding landscape at the B&B. It turned out our host was in “The Lord of the Rings” movie as a rider of Rohan, and that the big battle scene that took place in the third movie was shot on his land right under the range. Here is a picture from their back porch.

We traveled from Twizel to Te Anau, taking a ton of pictures along the way. Lake Dunstan and Lake Wakatipu were some of the sights we took in.

We stopped for lunch at the Gibbston Valley winery and had a lovely cheese plate with wine. As we continued on our way, we passed AJ Hackett, the world’s first bungy jump site. We decided to take the plunge, and each bungy jumped. It was awesome, but very scary! Here are is a shot of the bridge, and a shot of the distance to the bottom. The bridge is 43 meters from the water.

We then continued on to Te Anau, and stayed for two nights at Stonybrae, a wonderful B&B. Bill and Susan were the best hosts we could ask for, and we highly recommend staying there if anyone ever gets to Te Anau. Unfortunately we didn’t get any shots of their house of their view, which was incredible. We were so occupied conversing with Bill and Susan we completely forgot!

June 27, 2007

We went to Milford Sound today for sea kayaking. Most of our pictures in the Sound (which is actually a fiord) were taken with my film camera, so the pictures taken today were scenery on the way to and from Milford. We sea kayaked for 16 km, and ran into a pod of dolphins. We kayaked with them for 45 minutes. They came up so close to the kayak that we could almost touch them. We also had a close encounter with a seal. It was an amazing day.

June 28, 2007

Today we traveled to Queenstown. We spent the day shopping, picking up gifts for people, and just enjoying Queenstown. It was a nice relaxing day, and we had a lovely dinner at Captain’s Restaurant in downtown Queenstown.

June 29, 2007

After a little bit of trouble with chains at Thrifty car rental, and being stuck at the airport for 3 hours waiting on them to be delivered, we started on our way from Queenstown to Wanaka. We had to take a bit of a long way around due to ice on the Crown Range, but it was a nice drive all the same. We stayed at another B&B in Wanaka for two nights.

June 30, 2007

We went skiing at Cardrona today! It was Todd’s first time ever, and he did a great job. Out of respect for him, there are no pictures of him falling on his butt, which happened a few times. We both took lessons, beginning lessons for Todd and intermediate lessons for me. Even though it had been years since I last skied, I picked it up right away again. We had to drive a long road up to the resort itself; it was quite steep, and we got some beautiful pictures from it.

Because Todd spent the entire time on the bunny hill, I took some lovely shots from the top of the mountain. It was absolutely gorgeous scenery; here are a couple of my favorites. Due to bandwidth issues at our hotel, I'm just providing a link to the pictures.

There are also shots from the trip back down. Todd did not get hurt, but I unfortunately caused an old swimming injury to flair up in my left knee that required a visit to a Wanaka doctor. It’s just a sprain to the patella tendon, and I will be just fine. Here’s a shot of Todd coming down the hill.

July 1, 2007

Today we traveled from Wanaka to the Fox Glacier. Some of the pictures include Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea.

It was about a 4 hour drive, but we stopped at some beautiful places along the way, such as Blue Pools and Fantail Falls. We took pictures of the signs at these landmarks so everyone would know what they were looking at. It was raining part of the way, and the mountains had all these beautiful waterfalls cascading down, and we took a ton of pictures of those along the way.

The last pictures are of our room at the Fox Glacier Lodge. We are going to relax tonight, and if the weather holds out, we are going for a heli-hike on the Fox Glacier tomorrow morning!