Queenstown, NZ - Dec 30th

Queenstown is located right on Lake Wakatipu surrounded by mountains. Its a ski resort town and the adventure capitol of New Zealand with bungee jumping, jet boating, hiking kayaking, canyon swing, mountain luge-ing, skydiving, paragliding, parasailing, rafting, etc. etc. After a few days in the SW fiordlands there's so many people here!





Arrowtown is just outside Queenstown and an old gold mining town. We walked around town, went for a walk up the Arrow River and saw a Lord of the Rings movie site (there's tons around Queenstown - they even have guided LOTR tours!)



Lord of the Rings movie site - for all the fans: this is where Arwen (Liv Taylor) helped Frodo across the Ford of Bruinen with the Nazgul in pursuit.


Shotover River just outside Queenstown is where all the jet boating goes down.




A giant kiwi at Lake Wakatipu.



Check out the view out of our hotel room window. It doesn't get better than this.
And Lord of the Rings Movie site - the Remarkables (mountain range) were LOTR's Misty Mountains and Lake Alta up top is where Aragon, Frodo and fellowship headed down to Dimrill Dale toward Lothlorien.

Milford Sound, NZ - Dec 29th

Just north of Te Anau is the Milford Road which is so picturesque that we took most of our pictures on the 2 hour drive to Milford Sound. It starts following the Te Anau Lake then cuts away into the Eglinton Valley where the mountains are reflected in Mirror Lakes.



There are beautiful meadows of lupins that we couldn't get enough of!



At the head of the valley, the road steepens to The Divide where a lot of the hiking tracks come together.


The kea (bird) is on our Kia (car) and they love people and their sharp beaks were gnawing on the car attenaes.




The Chasm - where there's near vertical rapids where the Cleddau River has scoured out a deep, narrow channel with sculpted rocks hollowed out by churning stones.




Milford Sound is where the Cleddau and Arthur rivers flow into the fiord. The view is dominated with its distinctive Mitre Peak (1,694m) named because its looks like a bishop's mitre.








Touring the Te Anau Glow Worm Caves which are really cool but you can't take any pictures!

Doubtful Sound, NZ - Dec 28th

Wow! Fiordland National Park... we signed up for a 9-hour trip on Doubtful Sound in the southern fiords. Its actually quite a commitment to do this trip and many people do an overnight or a kayak trip but we did it all in one day on the Wilderness Cruise. First, you leave from the town of Manapouri and take an hour boat trip across Lake Manapouri to the power station where we got a tour.

Then its a 20km bus ride over Wilmot Pass (completely unconnected to any other road) via a cool Moss Garden with multi-colored ferns and lichen to Deep Cove. From here were did a 3-hour boat cruise out to the mouth of the fiord and the Tasman Sea where seals loll on the rolls, and then into Hall Arm where we saw bottlenose dolphins frolicking in the water. It rains 2 out of every 3 days in the southern fiords which you think would be annoying but the amount of water that dumps down makes for tons and tons of waterfalls!

Caitlan's Coast, NZ - Dec 27th

Today we drove the Caitlan's Coast. We stopped along the way for some walks to beaches, to see the seals, waterfalls and walk through the tropical rain forests.