New Zealand Part 1 - The South Island

We’ve now had just over two weeks in the South Island of New Zealand, and it has been very good indeed. We picked up our camper van on 7th Feb, and as you can see, it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb!!

We then raided the local supermarket for supplies, ready for the off. Unfortunately, we left the lights on whilst in the supermarket, and returned to a flat battery! Took us a while, but we managed to find some English chappy happy to connect our jump leads to.

We then set off to our first destination,

Greymouth, via the spectacularArthurs Pass.

Also, in a fun-packed day, we went to this place…
where there was a seal colony

and then headed for Murchison where we came across NZ’s largest swing bridge - Lauren was very scared indeed!...

After that, we headed up to Abel Tasman for a walk where I broke my flip flop and had to complete the walk with one foot. I collected some mussels on the beach and decided to cook them, but they turned out a bit rank, so I put them in a bin and walked away quietly!
We then had a day wine tasting in the Marlborough region, which was great. Loads of wines - all tasted pretty good to me. After a good day on the wine tasting, we headed to Hamner Springs to sample the natural sulphur thermal pools of the area - very relaxing, but it was raining.

By 13th Feb, we hit the glacier region, via Ross - an old gold mining town, where I struck lucky, and then got caught…

We visited two glaciers, the Franz Joseph and the Fox Glacier, which were both spectacular...

We then hit Queenstown, and took
a gondola up to the top of the town,

which had amazing views of the lakes.

By 17th, we were at the Milford Sound in the fiord region of New Zealand. On the road up there, on van was chrged at by thousands of sheep - very amusing indeed, but despite driver's best efforts, we didn't manage to hit a single one! Needless to say, our boat cruise on Milford Sound was beautiful, and we saw lots of dolphins and seals and stuff like that.

On the way back from Milford SOund to our campsite,

we attempted a walk called Falls Creek - not so much of a

walk than a spot of mounaineering! We went for about two hours, and then decided to turn around, totally knackered, before it got too dark.

After all that excitement, we then headed for a couple of quieter days in Dunedin, in the southeast of the South Island. We wandered around the city for a while, did a tour of the Cadbury's factory, which included a lot of tasting. We went to a museum for some culture as well. On the way out, we headed past a small fishing village called Moeraki, where we had our best meal so far in a fish restaurant recommemded by Rick Stein - it was great.

The plan is now to head back to Christchurch, to drop than van off, then to get a flight to Auklad, and basically do the same again! Lots of things on the list to do for the North Island, maybe even a skydive, Mum.