A reason for visiting NZ in the winter!
Trip Start
Mar 18, 2007
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47
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Trip End
Mar 16, 2008
Methven,
New Zealand
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
We have been lucky to have some great weather the last few days as you can probably see from the photos.
After leaving Dunedin we headed north towards Oamaru Stopping off at Moeraki to see the ancient boulders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moeraki_Boulders). This might not sound that exciting, but they were actually pretty fascinating as they were so perfectly round and the broken ones looked like the centre was made of crunchie (I didn't try eating them though). I'll add some pictures of these soon as I'm having the usual computer trials.
From here we made a brief stop in Oamaru, a pretty little town with the greenest sea I have ever seen. We had planned to see the penguins, but they were out having some lunch at the time so we decided to head on
Lake Tekapo 1
.From here on it was the most scenic drive, as we were now in Mackenzie country which has some of the best scenery in the already scenic NZ. We decided to head for Mount Cook after seeing the sign at the bottom of the 50km road advertising an 'alpine resort'. It was another lovely drive up the lakeside, before we arrived at the tiny Mount Cook village. It is so small that each hotel is actually signposted from the main road!
The next morning we were rewarded for our journey though as the upmost tip of Mount Cook appeared through the clouds. Mount Cook in NZ highest mountain at 3755m, also the highest in Australasia.
From Mount Cook we continued on to Lake Tekapo, another gorgeous spot with a backdrop of snowcapped mountains where we had a spot of lunch and a game of the hardest mini golf in the world (Tiger woods himself may have decided the parr here!). It was supposed to be a spot of advanced practice so Phill wouldn't beat us too badly in Christchurch, but all it proved was that we couldn't get the ball in the hole (esp. me who had to fish mine out of the pond on the course much to Tom's amusement!).
After lunch we headed onto Methven, as we had decided that we couldn't come to NZ in winter and not at least have a go at skiing
Lake Tekapo 2
. Yesterday we headed up the mountain on what our bus driver said was probably the best day of the season (splitting blue skies, light winds and powder snow) and signed up for the beginners course of 2 lessons and all the gear.This was alot of fun, and we started to think we had cracked it as on the nursery course we were able to (well most of the time) turn and stop. Then our instructor said that as we had done so well we could try the next run up. Tom took to this like a duck to water, but I spent most of my time sliding around on my bum!
Next stop Christchurch and our week working on a farm.
Bye for now.
