If you'd rather, feel free to just click through the photos, there are a lot more photos there than you see here.
Kekoa & I visited New Zealand in December of 2011. We did a bunch
of random stuff including bungee jumping, jet boating, hiking the Milford
Track, kayaking in Abel Tasman, flying planes, getting eaten alive by
sandflies, eating lots of chocolate, and drinking wine. This is my very
lazy version of a trip report, if you want to see all the photos
please click
here.
If you liked this trip report,
you can also see the rest of our trip reports here.
Queenstown / Wanaka / Mt Cook
The first couple days we hung out in
Queenstown. Kekoa went bungee jumping, and I dragged him hiking. We also
went jet boating, which was really scary because they drove much closer to
the canyon walls than expected. We also visited the Puzzling World in
Wanaka, which is really awesome if you like any sort of puzzles or optical
illusions. After Wanaka we visited Mt. Cook, but in not so great weather, so we
didn't have any great views, but I'd definitely return for better views in
the future.
Queenstown Panorama. Taken from the top of the gondola.
Kekoa waiting to do the Nevis bungee jump.
Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World in Wanaka, this was really fun!
Mt Cook area, weather was pretty bad that day.
Milford Sound / Milford Track
After Queenstown we visited Milford Sound and did the 3 nights / 4 days Milford Track. We really
enjoyed the Track. The facilities on the track are ridiculously nice, and the people we met were
were also extremely nice. I heard that the Routeburn track is also really quite pretty, that'll give us
another reason to go back.
Cruise @ Milford Sound, the cruise boats get
really close to the waterfalls. Note also how huge the falls are!
Clean C & K at the start of the Milford Track.
One of the bunk rooms at the Clinton Hut.
We had to hang up the boots so the Kea birds didn't come and bite or steal them.
One of the many many many waterfalls we saw along the Milford Track.
Huge burgers at Fergburger back in Queenstown, these were great after our hike. Next door is the Fergbakery, which had REALLY GOOD pies and sausage rolls.
Glaciers and Abel Tasman
Next we drove up the west coast and visited the 2 glaciers, Fox and Franz
Josef. We just drove up to the bases as looked around, we didn't pay for a
glacier walk. But, we did take a helicopter ride, and we landed on top of
Fox Glacier. This was a lot cooler than I expected. We really got to see
what it looked like high up where most of the snow and ice is, not the very
depressing melting dirty stuff at the bottom.
After seeing glaciers, we want to the Abel Tasman National Park, which had really pretty beaches.
I dragged Kekoa to go sea kayaking with me. Kayaks are fun.
View of the Franz Josef Glacier.
At the top of the Fox Glacier. (And another
photo of Kekoa wearing shorts in the snow.)
The tiny helicopter that flew us to the top of the Glacier.
Kayaking @ Abel Tasman. The beaches here were a lot prettier than I expected.
Plane flying, Wine Tasting, and Dolphin Swimming
We found this place near Abel Tasman that allowed you to fly your own stunt plane. The actual pilot
takes off and lands for you, but above air he lets you have control. Kekoa had way too much fun with
this place. I was pretty freaked out watching the plane
do loops and rolls.
After that we drove thru the Marlborough wine region and had a
bunch of really good Sav Blancs. Too bad a lot of the wineries in this
region produce small quantities, I'd love to get my hands on some of the
wines we tried.
We continued driving down east coast and got to Kaikoura. Here we saw lots of seals and I went
swimming with dolphins.
Kekoa about to take off in the stunt plane. He looks way too calm.
The famous Cloudy Bay Winery. Very good Sav Blanc. Also very pretty winery
Lots of dolphins along the coast of Kaikoura. It was really cool swimming with them.
