newzealand

WOW!

Ok, I'll explain from the beginning...
We went down to the main part of Queenstown where we boarded a bus which took us out to the Shotover River. There we rode the Shotover Jet through very narrow cliffs in very shallow water at very high speeds. That was quite thrilling!

We then got the bus up to the helicopter which took us up to the Skyline complex overlooking Queenstown. The helicopter ride was great, though a bit squishy - another first for us!

Once at the Skyline complex, we found the Luge ride (a toboggan-type ride downhill) and had a few goes at that. There were two tracks -...

So much we've done, so little time to tell you about it...

The trip from Lake Tekapo to Te Anau was long, but scenic. We stayed overnight in Te Anau, then drove up to Milford Sound the next day. We took a nice long cruise up the sound/fiord all the way out to the Tasman Sea and back again (apparently the closest part of NZ to Australia).

The next day we drove back to Queenstown - our final stop in NZ (for us kids anyway, Mum & Dad are flying to the north island after this). Not much happens when we spend all day driving, so I'll skip to yesterday when we went out to Wanaka to visit...

Can things get any better?! The things I've seen in the last two days have been amazing!

I was the only one to get up early on Saturday for the sunrise. I decided to stay on the balcony for it, but still it was great - got lots of good photos.

We then headed out to Mt. Cook. It's a really nice place out in the middle of nowhere (seemingly) but houses the two highest mountains in NZ.

Apart from snapping photos, we also visited the gift shop, had a nice lunch, then drove out to the Tasman valley to hike up to a lookout overlooking the Tasman glacier. It was a huge, tiring walk but with a...

It's been a busy two days since my last post; here's why...

Yesterday we explored the town/city of Christchurch. It was very cold, but beautiful! We went down to the river, took lots of photos and had lunch at Subway :) We looked around the Christchurch Cathedral, used an ATM to take out some NZ money, then went to Woolworths to stock up on food and Easter eggs.

Today we packed up and left Christchurch, travelling south-ish towards Lake Tekapo. However, part-way along the highway there was an accident so we took a 'detour' west towards to mountains. We got some great shots of the...

Well, I've officially travelled overseas for the first time! I'm posting this from a motel in Christchurch on a very cold, rainy morning.

We flew out from Coffs Harbour yesterday morning on a (very) small plane to Sydney. For most of us, it was our first time flying (that we remember) and was amazing! Looking out over the clouds, seeing all the tiny cars and houses... Spectacular!

Arriving at Sydney, we collected our baggage and made our way, via bus, to the international terminal. We checked in our bags again, then spent time looking around what we thought was a not-very-big airport......