On the road again (At last)

Hi everyone,
We finished working at the beginning of February at last! We had a couple of weeks relaxing in Katikati and going to the Beach, then Dad Piv and Sandra joined us on 20th Feb.Since then we have been all over. We have been to the Corromandle, Wellington, over on the ferry to the South Island, and went to Abel Tasman, Lake Tekapo, Arrowtown, and then to Doubtful and Milford sounds. Last stop Queenstown before flying back up to the North Island. We have been to some amazing places and seen some amazing things. I have put a few of my favourite pictures on this blog so I hope that you enjoy looking at them!

The follwing few pictures were taken in the Coromandle when we went in January for an overnight hike with Pip and John, our landlords at the time and a few of their walking mates. We climbed to the top of the mountains near Thames called the Pinnacles and watched the sun set up there, it was sooo beautiful.

Simon's favourite picture, this was of the full moon on the way back down to the bunkhouse, we thought it looked like a scene from a horror movie.

This is Cathedral cove near Whitianga in the Coromandle. We went on a boat trip for a couple of hours and saw all the "famous" spots such as this. It was a lovely day and the sea got a little rough which made it great fun.

Views from the west coast of the Coromandle peninsular on our way round to Auckland

This Marlborough sounds, the Ferry crosses through here on its route from Wellington to Picton in the south island. Definatly a great way to start the trip in the South!

This is the Abel Tasman national park near(ish) to Nelson. The sea was so blue and inviting but unfortunately pretty damn cold!! This was taken on a walk I managed to con Simon in to which turned out to be about 24kms. I made the rookie mistake of going in a brand new pair of walking shoes and Simon went in trainers, as you can imagine we both had pretty sore feet by the end of it! The last picture was a little beach that we waded to from the walking track and we had it to ourselves for all of 10 minutes until everyone followed our lead, but for 10 minutes we had our own piece of paradise! we even tried to swim and sore feet or not it was still too cold!

We hired out a Kayak for the day and amazingly we didn't kill each other by arguing but we were nearly dead at the end of the day, the sea decided to get a bit rough and the wind was against us all the way back, very very tired!!  It was well worth it though, we went all around the bays and around an island which had seals living on it, they had not long had their pup's so we spotted a few of those too along with a rare blue penguin After the walk and the canoe we had a couple of days rest!

The above photos were all taken at a lake in the middle of the south island called lake Tekapo, the water was so blue and the scenery absolutely stunning. This was Simon's favourite spot in the south. In the evening we went up to the observatory at the top of Mount John and looked at the stars through some huge telescopes. The pictures of the sunset were taken from our lodge which was right on the lake, shame about the bus loads of "certain" tourists that showed up every ten minutes!! but even with that an awesome place to stay.

This is Arrowtown, near Queenstown. The whole town is set out to look like it is really old, with old style country pubs, old fashioned sweet shops with all the sweets in jars (Needless to say Si and I went in there!) Was a really cool little place and we had a lovely meal at an old pub there.

We did a scenic flight over Doubtful sounds which was amazing, however we did all feel a little sick when we got out! The pilot was great he was zipping over all the mountains and through all the arms of the sounds and came down low for us over a pod of dolphins. Definatly somewhere to come back to!

The above is Milford sounds, it was unfortunatly a bit cloudy but we went on a boat trip down the arm of the sounds and back, was still great scenery just a shame about the weather, they do get between 5 and 6 metres of rain a year here though so we would have been pretty lucky to get a sunny day! The road to the sounds had a few really good spots on it though which we stopped at, the waterfall in the picture was just next to the road!

We stopped a couple of nights in Queenstown, which was very touristy, it was a cool place to have a few beers and a meal. We even managed to pay for our dinner by winning on roulette at the casino, but it is not very pretty in the summer so not put any pics on! We are back in the north island now as Jon and then Mum Piv are coming over for a visit, so there will be some more pics soon. Hope everyone is well and missing you all. xxx