We drove from Queenstown to Te Anau which is a nice town by the lake we found out about Milford Sound tours and then headed up the road towards Milford. The road to Milford sound is often blocked or closed due to land slides. We were lucky enough that there had just been a landslide but they had manage to clear it a day before we arrived. Due to roadworks it was closed at night but we were able to get up to Lake Gunn which is a lovely small DOC site on the side o...

There was yet another amazing road from Wanaka to Queenstown quite like Dartmoor . . . Dartmoor with mountains. We stopped at a lookout over Queenstown which had a walk up to Rocky Peak. Another climb but yet again a stunning walk with amazing views. On the way down James realised that he did not have the van key on him ... I thought e was joking as he downed his all the time ... He wasn't. We ran down the hill staring at the ground to see if we could see it. Wh...

The next day we dropped Nabil off in Haast as he was on a tighter time scale to us and he caught a bus to Wanaka. We then back tracked a little and headed further down the west coast to Jacksons Bay. A lovely man we met at Titirangi Farm suggested that we go there as the road is beautiful and there was amazing fish and chips and when he was there last he walked to the each and there were penguins! Well he was right on all fronts except for the penguins (they were...

The three of us (Nabil included!) set on our way down the west coast to the glaciers. The landscape changed again from big bushy mountains to even bigger snow capped mountains! We stopped in Franz Josef and sorted out our activity for he next day and then walked to the beginning of the Franz Glacier up the terminal moraine valley. It was so impressive and made us really excited for the next day when we would get to go on the ice at Fox!! We then went up to a DOC ...

We decided that our next destination should be Pancake rocks down the west coast. The drive down there was stunning along the dramatic coast line and lush green bush. Pancake rocks are amazing rock formations on the coastline formed by layers of limestone and debris and algae all eroding in different times causing the stacked pancake effect! Amazing blowholes have also been calved out by the rough west coast and at high tide with good swell (how we saw them!) the...