So, it turns out that wireless access is not so common on the West Coast of New Zealand, imagine that.
We have been having a wonderful time, skiing, hiking, glacier gazing, caving, rafting, hiking, and driving. I will not do a long post right now, since this is our last night on the South Island, and we want to get out to see Christchurch some more. We fly to Auckland tomorrow, just for one night stay, then back to Guam. Don't feel too sorry for us though, we get four days in Hawaii before finally landing in DC.
We skied just one day. We learned that New Zealanders seem to like their slopes steep, and have a slightly more aggressive rating system on the slopes. The snow was great at the top, east cost icy at the bottom, but we had a great day. Harder skiing than we are used to, but beautiful views!
After skiing, we headed to Queenstown, stopping at some wineries along the way. The pass between Wanaka and Queenstown was quite hair-raising, but not as bad as the drive out to the first winery we visited. Here I am driving the van - that sign next to me says "Parachutes required". The drive was along the edge of a steep gorge - but I did fine.
The winery was right across the road from the bridge where bungee jumping started. I honestly thought I might try it - until I saw the gorge, and the bridge, and then I did not go anywhere near it.
Queenstown was OK, a bit too touristy and commercial for my taste, but a nice harbor.
We got rained out from our planned flight to Milford Sound from Queenstown - something we will definitely need to come back to New Zealand for. So, we headed back towards Wanaka and over the Haast Pass to the West Coast.
The pictures just don't capture how beautiful it was - partly because the mountain white caps blend in with the cloudy skies. Cloudy, rainy skies that did not go away for five days - and rained us out of a few activities. Anyway, here is another shot of Lake Wanaka, and then some of the drive.
We ended up on the West Coast, a beautiful, rugged coastline.
One of our goals was to see the glaciers, and maybe do a guided glacier walk. We saw the Fox Glacier and the Franz Joseph Glacier, but decided to pass on the glacier walk due to weather. Driving rain on a glacier just did not sound inviting. We did get a small weather window to hike out to the terminal face of the Franz Joseph though, and it was beautiful.
One very cool thing we did was caving and cave rafting. We hiked through a huge cave system and then floated on the river in the cave to see the glow worms, then out onto the river. The link to the website of the company is www.caverafting.com. There are pictures from our trip. Follow the link to "Online Photos" and then choose the Aug 3 Rafting Trip. There are photos of other people too, but Tom and I are in there.
If it looks like I have a black eye in some of the photos, that is because I do. I had a pretty good tumble skiing, and my goggle left quite a bruise under my right eye.
Near the rafting we also visited the pancake rocks on the coast:
1 comment:
Amy, you guys are doing it up out there! Happy you are able to and sad about your Gram. We're thinking about you.
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