My Final Days: South Island

The trip to Queenstown started off amazing. We were hoping that my weather luck would stay with us and it sure did. Not a cloud in the sky when we arrived. I'm not normally a fan of taking pictures out the window, but the mountains were too cool not to.

We picked up our beautiful rental car and went for a drive along the devil's staircase. It was beautiful, but the sun was starting to go behind the mountains, so its still not on par with the beauty I first saw it in. There was so much snow around that I didn't really expect, but it was cool to see the city in a different light since this was my 4th trip. The next day we woke up and did the gondola and luge, followed up by some frisbee golf, despite the temperature hanging right around freezing all day. Spenser stayed in Queenstown for a few more days and Sean and I headed off to Dunedin.

On our way to luge with the city in the background

The luge track!

The roads were quite icy and we left in the midst of it snowing, but we made it safe and sound, though a bit behind schedule. There were some beautiful towns along the way and we took some photo stops to get a break from driving.

Its snowing on us!

We arrived in Dunedin just in time to sneak in a Speights brewery tour. I mistakenly thought the time was an hour later than it was, so we ended up walking around the city for a bit first. Even though I had done the tour before, I learned some new things and it was fun to do again.

The next day we did the Cadbury tour, walked around town again, went to the art museum and then headed out to the peninsula. We did some really neat walks, despite almost being blown over and then headed to a beach where we watched a few penguins come in for the day and some sea lions laying about. One of them almost tried to chase me down.

Wouldn't you want to be one of these sheep?

Its so windy that the trees are just permanently at an angle.

Sandfly bay

This was fun to walk down, and not as much back up!

Penguin!!

Dunedin at night!

Baldwin Street, the steepest residential street in the world

Tuesday we spent the day driving to Mt Cook. We stopped at the Moeraki Boulders, naturally rounded boulders that have come ashore. We also stopped at the Elephant rocks, the natural landscape used as Aslan's camp in the Narnia movies. We accidentally drove past it first and stumbled upon another trail with a really neat landscape. We finally got to our room for the night set right on Lake Pukaki right near the base of the mountains with a perfect view of Mt. Cook. We got extremely lucky with the weather again and got some wonderful views of the mountain, which was good because it was clouded in the rest of the time we were there. The lake has a natural bright blue hue due to the glacier rock sediment.

Moeraki Boulders

Elephant Rocks - Where Narnia was filmed

Lake Pukaki with Mt. Cook in the background

We woke up early the next morning and tried to do a hike in the mountains to the base of a glacier. We made it about halfway into the 4 hour return hike and decided to turn around, but we had seen everything we wanted to. The trail was quite icy and the rain was coming in, so we decided it would be best to turn back around instead of hiking an additional two hours in the rain. It was incredible how the mountains were in a giant cloud and overcast, but just as the mountains ended there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The mountains were too pretty, so I took WAY too many pictures, but I have tried to narrow them down.

We did another short walk to the base of the tasman glacier and then headed off to Lake Tekapo for the afternoon.

Tasman Glacier

Blue lake - Frozen over

Lake Tekapo was absolutely stunning. The lake is known for its blue color and the pictures I took don't do it justice. We were really lucky it was a sunny day out (my weather luck was still with us). I thought the view by the water's edge was as pretty as it could get, but then we drove up to the top of Mt. John and had even more stunning views. It was the only pictures Sean took the entire trip (other than a few of the sea lions fighting). I could have stayed up there all day (minus the wind and cold).
 

There was a chapel on the waterfront and this was the view from inside

This is the chapel from the previous picture

The view from Mt. John

We drove the next day to Christchurch to fly home. We stopped at Peel Forest along the way. The trail we wanted was closed, but we were able to do a short trail to a massive tree. We got into Christchurch early and walked around a bit. A lot more of the city is accessible from the last time I was there, so it was interesting to see the progress (and a lot more of the destruction). It was interesting how much effort they have put into making the construction sites of the city center pretty. Most of the fences have decorative patterns on them and construction walls have been painted. Even shipping containers on the side of the road put in place to protect drivers from potential landslides have been covered with different artistic displays. Despite many road closures and extremely confusing maps, we managed to make it to the airport on time and catch our flight home safe and sound.

It's going to be a busy few days, but hopefully it will keep me from being sad about having to leave. I'm excited to get to see everyone and can't wait for some good Texas heat.