Heading along Lake Taupo with Tongariro, Nguaruhoe and Ruapehu in the background.
Desert road with Nguaruhoe covered in snow.
We spent a few hours at Te Papa where the new coloseal squid exhibition was.
I was expecting it to be much bigger but it was only about 3 metres long.
Bluebridge took us across the straight to the south island. You can see Te Papa in the background.
The other bluebridge boat passing us from Picton
The sounds were nice and calm
Heading through Marlborough Sounds
Just before we hit Picton there were thousands of jellyfish in the water.
The coastline coming into Kaikoura
We even saw some South Island Pied Oyster Catchers running round on the beach.
We found some plenty of seals all alone the coast
This seal had the mean as itchy back
The huge slip just out of Kaikoura which happened during the Christchurch quakes.
We had a look at the Ron Mueck exhibition with all the crazy sized naked people. Me and the baby
Karen and the wild man. All the sculptures were made of fibreglass from clay moulds
The bored lady
We loaded the car up with as many cookies as would fit after a quick detour to the cookie time factory.
Start of the passes crossing the southern alps
Some braided rivers between passes
Some cheeky keas on the arthurs past jumped on our car to try have a feed of rubber
At the top of Arthurs pass the weather turned from brilliant to horrible rain clouds - yes thats right we are almost on the west coast
A stream that flows right overtop of the road.
This curious weka wanted some food when we camped alongside Lake Mahinapua in Hokitika
He almost pecked the camera thinking it was food.
The lake mirrored the mountains early in the morning.
A massive peace of greenstone in the jade factory.
We visited the glass factory where we watched the man making glass whales
They had plenty of glass blown animals, plates and decorations
One of the greenstone carvers sent us on a little trip to this stream where he said we could find ourselves some greenstone. There were plently of whitebaiters out but no greenstone.
We walked out to the franz joseph glacier.
It looked like it had retreated even further than when I last saw it when I was 15
I decided to climb the glacier and have a little walk around.
After camping out at Gillespies beach on the coast we went and walked to the fox glacier.
We only saw fox from a distance as it was pissing with rain.
The eroded mountains where the glacier used to be 100 years ago.
Getting closer to haast
There were plenty of waterfalls to stop and have a look at.
The blue pools which were infact grey because of all the rain.
An early morning view over Lake Hawea
We had a quick stop at puzzelworld on our way through Wanaka.
It was snowing at the top of the pass between Wanaka and Queenstown
A view of queenstown from the top of the pass
We went and did some shopping in Queenstown then headed along Lake Wakatipu
10 October 2010
For the last week we have been driving down south to Te Anau where we will be living for the next 6 months. We had a few stops in Matamata for cousin jonathans wedding, then palmy, wellington, kaikoura, christchurch, hokitika, haast, hawea, wanaka, and queenstown.
We were hoping to check out the carnage from the Christchurch quake but everything was cleared up and back to normal. At 9am in the morning I did however feel my first earthquake ever which was 20km away at 4.2 on the richter scale.
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