New Zealand part 2

Milford Sound

Milford Sound is a fjord- despite the name- which has steep Glacier carved cliffs plummeting into a deep harbour. It is surrounded by rainforest, and is in an area where rainful is measured in metres rather than milimetres. Luckily for us we got one of the few days in a year when it was sunny. Mitre Point whish is in the photo, is 1600 metres high- higher than Ben Nevis. Our cruise driver told us how one man climbed it and came down in less than 8 hours once, although his explanation of how he did it ("what can we say guys- he's a Kiwi") sounded somewhat strange given that he was a Scouser...
The waterfall here is 150 meters high, and looks like a spiders web in this picture

Invercagill and the South Coast

Mark Twain or someone similar descibed Invercagill as "the arsehole of the earth" or something along those lines. This was not entirely unfair- it was not fun. We (my new Brazilian friends and I) hired a car to travel round for a couple of days and the picture above- taken immediately after a shark attack on the south coast was about the only highlight.

Queenstown (part 2)

Do you take cards?

The picture above sums up my return couple of days in Queenstown quite well. There was a large group of us, many of whom were either born with, or had acquired, a taste for tequila- in large quantities. As a result we did a lot of partying and the credit card came out a lot (see above). A lot of fun. In terms of achievements, I did manage to go River Boarding (like white water rafting but on a body board) one day. This is a lot of fun and can also be used as an effective hangover cure.

Lovely Laura

Time out from Tequila please

Wellington

I left Queenstown and a lot of my Kiwi Experience pals for some well earned detox days in Wellintgton with the Janes'. Young Jed(i) proved to have perception well in advance of his 5 years by telling his mum after just a few hours of knowing me how "cool" i was. Out of the mouths of babes... In Wellinton, other than not drinking and going for a couple of runs, I played golf (badly- not unexpected in the "windy city"), valued a hair salon for Rebecca's friend (always using my expertise to help others...) and watched a lot of footage of me and brov from 1987 that's been tarnsferred from beta max to the modern world. From the footage, 1987 seemed to be a year dominated by bouncy castles, building igloos and wearing red trousers. No wonder Jed thinks I'm cool.

Taipo

Headed north from Wellington on Friday morning and have since skydived from 15,000 feet above the lake, which was awesome and yesterday walked the Tongerero crossing (Mount Doom from LoTR's). As the pictures show, it was absolutely awesome- 19km's but worth all of it. Even for me that prepared for the 5.30 alarm call by going out til half 3... I also discovered the sepia setting on my camera yesterday- so there's a lot of arty shots like this!

Rotorua
Just got to Rotorua- the geyser capital of New Zealand. It smells of sulphur. This is good if you want to squeeze out cheeky farts, but less good if you don't like the permanent smell of cheeky farts all day...
Tomorrow I go boack water rafting and then fly out of Auckland on friday. All good!

written by

tevans1 on February 3, 2007 from Rotorua, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Tom's Travels 2007

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