New Zealand, South Island

The plan was to spend around 4 weeks working our way around the South Island and then 2 weeks in the North Island. Ellie's Mum and Step-Dad came over from England to join us, and we booked holiday cottages in various places of interest to stay in. We also hired a car, which we immediately had to upgrade from a family estate to a 4x4 just to fit all our luggage in!

We headed out from Christchurch to spend a couple of days in Akaroa, a beautiful French Colonial town with a lovely harbour and gorgeous scenery. The roads in the area were interesting to say the least. Gravel tracks that were incredibly steep in some places. We visited Onuku to view a sweet little Maori chapel before heading over the mountain to Flea Bay. We had hoped to see little blue penguins here, but they were in the process of malting in their burrows so you couldn't get close incase they got scared and ran out into the sea. They are very vulnerable whilst malting since they are not waterproof, so they would drown if they entered the water.

Our next stop for a few days was Moeraki, a remote village south of Oamaru. The house that we stayed in had a balcony with stunning views out to sea, and we regularly saw fur seals playing in the water. The beach just down the hill was excellent for shell hunting, and we picked up lots of fragments of Paua shell that Ellie hopes to make some jewellery from. We walked to view the locally famed Moeraki Boulders, strange perfectly round rock formations just scattered along the beach. One evening we drove to the local Lighthouse and watched yellow eyed penguins coming ashore. Such a fantastic experience. There was also a huge colony of fur seals here, which is great to see given that they were nearly hunted to extinction not so long ago.

Nugget Point was really pretty with beautiful turquoise sea.

Heading further south along the coast road we stayed in a lodge in The Catlins. Here there was very attractive scenery, complete with rain forests and long sweeping beaches. We were very lucky to see an elephant seal.

Moving on our next stop was Fiordland where the views were just stunning. We based ourselves in Te Anau, a lovely little town, and went out walking every day. To view Milford Sound we took a boat cruise, then got on kayaks and took a trip to the underwater observatory. It was drizzling for most of the day so we couldn't see as far as we would have liked, but a benefit was the hundreds of temporary waterfalls cascading down the rock faces.

On towards the Southern Alps we stayed near Wanaka at Lake Hawea. Lots of walking here but the best bit was the driving through the mountains. Simply stunning. 

After this we went back to the coast to Okarito, a lovely secluded little village. The snowy mountains provided a great backdrop to fishing on the beach! We went looking for Kiwi one night. Unfortunately no luck but we did see lots of glow worms. Instead we went to the Kiwi sanctuary in Franz Josef where we saw 3 kiwi. They are such endearing little birds! We also visited the snouts of two glaciers, Fox and Franz Josef. This was a great experience as we had never seen any before.  We also indulged in a little luxury at the hot pools that are fed from the glacier melt water.

Driving further north we stopped at the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks, very interesting limestone formations complete with blow holes. 

The place that we were heading for was the Operara Basin to visit the limestone arches deep in the forest. 

We also walked down the old railway track used by both old timber and coal mining companies. It was interesting going having rained heavily, and we had to run through a few waterfalls!

Once we headed up to Golden Bay on the north side of the island the weather improved considerably! We spent a relaxed 5 days here enjoying the beautiful beaches. Ashley and Alan managed to catch some Kahawai, which made a very welcome dinner and tasted quite similar to mackerel. We had a nice but bracing walk along Farewell Spit as it was very windy. 

Many whales get beached here every year, and just a couple of weeks after we were there 400 pilot whales got stranded. Hundreds of volunteers were out trying to re-float them, but only around 200 survived. Very sad!

Finally we set of for Picton to catch the ferry over to Wellington to start our North Island adventure.