Queenstown from the sky!

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Trip Start Oct 20, 2008 Previous
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  Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand
Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Since our last update, we have journeyed across the centre of south, South Island to reach Queenstown.  We managed to go whale watching in Kaikoura as the weather picked up for us.  It was pretty cool.  We saw five whales come up for air, well a third of the whale anyway!  Amazing animals, and I think most of the awe was in actually being so close to them.  A real bonus on the way back was a school of about 100 dusky dolphins that swam and jumped alongside the boat, real performers!

Our next big stop along the way was Dunedin.  A very Scottish feel of this city, helped along by the many pipe bands performing on the day we were there.  Saying that, we didn't see an awful lot of Dunedin as it lashed solid for two days while we were there!  Bit of a nitemare in a campervan!  It did make the pubs with their open fires nice and appealing though!

Next stop was Te Anau which we used as our base to discover the beautiful Milford Sound.  We took a cruise out on the Milford Sound which leads to the Tasman sea.  Milford Sound is a very beautiful National Park where glaciers have shaped the landscape giving mountains sweeping into the sea and huge areas of forest clinging to the rocks.  There are still glaciers around so always a risk of avalanche, particularly worrying as you travel through a long tunnel scooped out under the mountain!  On the cruise we got to see two little penguins as well, very cute!  Our bus driver for the day, Merv, was an ex sheep/deer and cattle farmer and delighted in telling us all about his sheep in particular most of the way there and back!  He was helped along by two very questioning Canadians in the front....very informative!  Big business over here, roughly 80 million sheep in the country!!  Did get to sample some as well as the very tasty venison (lots of deer farms in the south too).

We arrived into Queenstown yesterday.  This is a beautiful town, situated at the lake and mountains.  Its popular for skiing in the winter and has every adrenaline sport you can imagine at all times of year!  Declan partook today in the craziness by doing a skydive.....I opted not to after much deliberating.  He absolutely loved it, his words were "amazing, I'm doing that again".  He may well find himself in that position as I was spurred on today listening to everyones praises, so a skydive might be in the running yet......

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Embracing the rain in Dunedin	Milford Sound	Queenstown	Ready for take-off

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