After another early start in Franz Josef we headed further South to Wanaka. Along the way we stopped at Lake Matheson, known locally as 'mirror lake', but unfortunately it was a little too cloudy to get a picture post card photo. Wanaka is small town which sits on the edge of a crystal clear alpine lake and has Mount Aspiring NP as a backdrop-pretty beautiful as you can see from the pics. The town is home to many adventure sports, winter sports and of course vineyards. After much research and debate we decided that snowboarding was just too expensive and so spent much of our time planning trips in Queenstown. We did however visit Puzzling World- a strange place with a huge maze you walk around and lots of weird rooms that are optically challenging!! It's fair to say it's different.

En route to Queenstown we stopped off at a bungy jumping centre over the Kawarau river - we agreed that it was a lot of money (£80ish) to find out what it feels like to plunge to your death! Apparantly that bungy jump is small at just 42M, compared to the newest bungy called Nevis which is 134M - surely you would have to be clinically insane to jump that??!! Although this is stating the obvious to those of you who know us...... we didn't participate in the bungy thing.

So on we went to Queenstown where we had a quiet night in preparation for our trip to Milford Sound the next day. Milford Sound is a spectacular fiord that was formed from a drowned glacial valley. It's actually named after Milford Haven as the first European to sail there was sealer John Groni from Milford Haven. The river 'Cleddau' runs into the fiord and there is also a St Anns Point. Hard to imagine the similarities though when you see how beautiful it is!?

After collecting our chariot we drove the scenic alpine road to Te Anau and onto Milford Sound. When we arrived it was raining and misty which was surprisingly good as we got some very 'moody' photos. After staying in the lodge overnight and nearly being blown away by gale force winds, we boarded a boat to cruise the sounds. The previous nights storm had blown away much of the cloud and when the sun came out it was glorius. To add to the overwhelming beauty of the sounds we were fortunate enough to 'adopt' a small pod of dolphins which swam with the boat for about an hour. We got some fantastic photos and footage - better than we had when we went dolphin watching in Paihia!

Once we were back on dry land we meandered back to Queenstown - the party town of the south and Mecca for adrenaline junkies. The following night we decided to sample the much raved about night scene but ended up staying in the first pub we went too after the bar staff gave us a handful of BOGOF vouchers! What can we say....... we're on a budget?! It was all good, or to coin a New Zealand phrase, 'sweet as', until the coyote ugly style dancing and wet t-shirt competition started -oohhh time to go! Still, we left rather under the influence and all for less than forty quid. Not bad going.

Whilst in Queenstown we visited a town nearby called Arrowtown -a picturesque little place where you felt like you'd been teleported back 50 years. It's now very geared up to tourists with endless sheepskin and green stone shops but we had a fabulous cream tea there. It was once a gold mining town and there are heavily restored remains of an old Chinese settlement there. The Chinese migrated there during the gold rush to make a million but ended up living a life of poverty and social exclusion. It was an interesting place to look round but gave a disturbing insight into their lives.

On our final day in Queenstown Mark went jet boating on the Shotover river. From what I can gather it's a large jet boat which flies down the river at ridiculous speeds for twenty minutes, narrowly missing the canyon sides and doing 360
degree turns. Not for the faint hearted - so I didn't go! We rounded off our trip with a nationally reknowned Fergburger and a trip to the cinema. Sweet as......