Category: 2014 Feb New Zealand

This was really the last day of our trip. Tomorrow we have a 6:20 am flight out of Christchurch that should have us in Brisbane by 7:30 am and heading home to Toowoomba just as soon as we can clear immigration and customs, retrieve our cars and get away. We had scheduled our departure from Twizel for 8:00 intending to...

Our goal for today was to drive from Dunedin to visit the Aoraki Mount Cook park and overnight at Twizel. That was going to require a considerable amount of driving and some luck with the weather. Forecasts had been variable but it seemed that it could be expected to become overcast through the day and rain sometime during the night....

We left Invercargill just before 8:00 am intent on arriving in Dunedin in plenty of time to catch our 2:30 pm train up the Taieri Gorge. The 200 km was expected to take about 2.5 hours of driving plus coffee stop, getting us there in plenty of time for lunch before the train departed. For most of the way we...

Our plans for today were loose. Accommodation had been booked in Invercargill to facilitate our driving as far south as reasonably possible and Majella had done some investigation about the tuatara exhibit at the Southland Museum and had determined that Bluff was as far south as we could drive on the mainland. The day was expected to build on that...

Our reason for coming to Te Anau was to take the day excursion to Milford Sound. We could have happily driven ourselves and taken a cruise as we did when we visited with Pat and Laura Ryan at the end of 2007. However, when Majella was arranging our accommodation with Birchwood Cottages they had suggested that they could arrange a...

This was always going to be a quieter day with just a bit more than 170 km from Queenstown to Te Anau to be driven in preparation for our day trip to Milford Sound tomorrow. Conversation last night had turned to a gift store, Vesta, that some of the women had discovered in their wandering about Queenstown yesterday. They were...

This was to be our day in Queenstown, unofficial adrenalin capital of the world. Somewhat paradoxically our tour director, Majella, had decreed a free morning with the first scheduled activity to be meeting at the base of the Skyline gondola ride to the restaurant that overlooks Queenstown. That left us free to sleep in or to spend a leisurely morning around...

This day was always going to be about driving. We needed to move from Franz Josef to Queenstown, a bit more than 350 km which would take 4.5 to 5 hours of driving in the van plus time for stops. It finished up taking us a bit more than 8 hours with sightseeing along the way. Michael, Maria, Majella and...

What a day! Although the distance from Hokitika to Franz Josef was not great, just 130 km, we planned to get away by 8:00 am to allow maximum time for exploring the glaciers and surrounds. It was drizzling as we prepared to leave but we had hopes that the weather might improve as the day went on. We got away...

The planned route for today involved more than 360 km of driving from Motueka to Hokitika via Murchison, Westport, Punakaiki, and Greymouth. Google estimated a bit more than 4.5 hours but we expected it to take longer than that in actual driving and then there would be time for coffee, lunch, comfort stops, and sightseeing. Weather forecast was for rain...