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Kia Ora from New Zealand!
I hope that everyone is well! Helen and I are coming to the end of our New Zealand tour now (unfortunately!!). We have had the most amazing time in this beautiful country. It is definitely one of my favorite place that we have visited so far, and if I were offered a job here I imagine that I would take it!
We arrived in Auckland in the North Island form Fiji. We went straight to organise our means of travel around New Zealand, and after speaking to an agent and doing some budgeting it worked out cheapest for us to rent a camper van for the three weeks! We were both really excited about this as it was not only cheaper than the bus tours, but it also gave us loads more freedom to go where we wanted and explore lots of place that are off the bus routes! We hired a campervan called a spaceship (http://www.spaceships.tv) which is a modified Toyota people carrier, so it drove like a car, but was roomy enough for us both to sleep in (and cook and store all our stuff). It also has a DVD player and you swap your DVDs with all the other spaceships you meet along the way, so its really nice in the evening if there is nothing else to do. Campervan's seem to be pretty big thing over here with almost half the cars you come across on the road being campervans. Were both really glad we got one, we've had so much fun and its nice to have been able to drive yourself to all these places.
So after a short stay in Auckland, we headed down to Rotorua to see the hot springs. It was a smallish town, and felt quite American in the sense that the town sprawled outward (bungalows) and there wasn't a concentrated town center. The hot springs were pretty cool (not literally) and the whole place smelt of egg, but it was nice. We then headed down to Taupo which is a town next to New Zealands biggest lake. From here we went to the Tongariro national park. This is where they filmed Mt. Doom and lots of Mordor in the Lord of the Rings films. We did a lovely walk here which took us 6 hours and is supposed to be one of the nicest one day walks in the world called the Tongarriro Crossing. You walk through volcanic terrain up to a crater, and along to some volcanic lakes before descending through rainforest to the end of the walk. It was lovely. You also get to walk right past Mt.Doom which is pretty cool!
After the walk we headed down to Wellington to catch the ferry to the south island. It was a three hour crossing and luckily wasn't rough. When we got to the south island we were heading down to the Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers in the southern alps. On the way we drove through Blenheim (the wine making region), and some really beautiful and scenic country side. When we got to the glaciers there was unfortunately some torrential downpours, so we were unable to do any of the glacier hikes or climbs which was a bit of a shame, but we still got to see them which was cool.
After this we headed to the lake town of Wanaka and then on to Queenstown, both beautiful places. This is where they filmed lots of the Lord of the rings trilogy, so you can imaging the scenery. Near Wanaka we did a walk called the Rob Roy trek, which went up through rainforest and came out at two huge glaciers with 14 waterfalls! It was a really beautiful place, but the sun was in just the wrong position to take photos, so the pictures that we do have of it don't do it justice really! But definitely worth doing if you ever come here (even with a 30km unsealed corrugated track to get there!) Queenstown was lovely and surrounded by the most beautiful mountains and lake. It was also a modern town and a lot smaller than either of us had imagined. It only has a population of 8,500. I could quite happily live there though!
We then headed down to Milford Sound, which is actually in incorrectly named Fjord. The drive to the sound was gorgeous, surrounded by Mountains and rainforrest with waterfalls cutting through every now and then. Sir Ian McKellan described it as the most beautiful drive to anywhere in the world, and it was pretty impressive. When you get to the sound its even more impressive, and huge. Its really difficult to get a sense of scale there, we were told that ocean liners can easily sail up the sound and are dwarfed by the huge vertical walls of the sound. We went on a boat tour through the sound which was really spectacular, and we even manged to get some bottle nose dolphins to follow us for 15 min and jump up in front of the boat as they were wake riding.
We then headed down along the south coast on the Southern Scenic route to the Catlins National Park, which looks surprisingly English. We went to a petrified forest (which proved New Zealand was once part of Gondwanaland), and also New Zealands southern most point. This took us round to Dunedin the south islands second city. We went to the Otago Peninsula where we saw some seals and also the worlds only land nesting site for the Royal Albatross, the worlds biggest bird. It was huge! We also visited the Steepest road in the world, and then walked up it (I wanted to drive but Helen thought it best not to, probably good advise too!).
From Dunedin we headed in to see Mt. Cook and the two lakes next to it, Lake Pukaki and Lake Tekapo. Once again the weather wasn't on our side in the mountains and we were unable to get a clear photo of Mt. Cook, but we did get to see the lakes. They are really blue, almost a milky turquoise in colour which looks really strange. Its from all the glacial powder in the water. It was still a lovely part of the country though.
And then we headed up to Kaikoura (where we are now) and are having a great time. We went whale watching this morning and saw 2 Sperm whales and a huge pod of dolphins! It was great! there are some lovely walks around here to so that's what were going to do now until we head back down to Christchurch and fly out to Bangkok on Monday.
I hope you are all well and look forward to hearing from you soon!
Love
Nick
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