Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
The rest of the South Island...From Christchurch we drove to a place called Hanmer Springs where they have natural hot springs. The place itself was beautiful but it smelt pretty bad from the springs, you got used to it after a while though. We did actually go to the springs, there are loads of different pools you can sit in at different temperatures, it was quite nice but more like outdoor baths than a spa which is what we were expecting. The only other thing we did in Hanmer Springs was have a round of mini golf which Phil obviously won!!From there we drove to Greymouth which is a pretty dull place and we wouldn't have stopped at all but we had decided to do some caving. The caving trip we did was brilliant, there were only 4 people on it including ourselves and the guide was really good. We climbed down the cave most of the time but then did some tubing where we sat and floated along on these big rings in the pitch black, it was pretty scary! We also got to see the glowworms, they are great, when you look up at them it looks like a starry sky, they are really amazing little things. We had a few tight squeezes along the way but nothing too bad. Phil was pretty brave and army crawled his way through this really tight little tunnel which he barely fit through, I can't stand being in tiny spaces like that so I chickened out! We happily left Greymouth and went to a place called Motueka which is right on the edge of the Abel Tasman National Park. The National Park was absolutely beautiful, we got lucky when we were there because even though it was still a bit chilly we had clear sunny days and still water which I'm sure made it look even more beautiful if thats possible. One day we were there we went on a kayaking trip, we kayaked for a few hours and then stopped on one of the beaches for lunch before starting our 3 hour walk back to the start. We both really enjoyed it, the scenary couldn't have been any better. Also when we were there we walked around the Te Waikoropupu springs which apparently have the clearest water in the world, that was a nice walk and the water was amazing. On our last day we hired bikes and went on a 2 hour bike ride around a place called Takaka, hard work but really good fun and we passed more really nice beaches as well. Our last main stop on the South island was Nelson. Nelson was pretty nice, just a big town really. We walked to the centre point of New Zealand but the weather was awful so the views weren't really that good. We were pretty lazy in Nelson because where we were staying the guy gave us a TV and wireless internet so we ended up spending most of the time in the van!!! I don't think we missed out on too much and we made a point of walking around the town so we had seen it. Last stop was Picton, didn't do anything here apart from catch the ferry over to the North island. So the South island of New Zealand was just stunning, I would recommend anyone to come here, we really enjoyed it and hope to come back in the winter at some point to see it all covered in snow. Now onto the North island to see how that compares...
- comments
Jasmin This is the greatest post I have come acrsos so far.I am really pleased to post my comment on this blog .I love your blog by the way, I am gonna have to add you to my list of watched blogs .Thank you for this very useful information. stored it.Thanks again and keep up the good work.