Glenorchy; Routeburn Track

Hello all, thanks for being patient with our posts. We still have limited access to the internet but should hopefully get hooked up this week at our new apartment. No one seems to be in any hurry here to get things done including the internet people.

The Routeburn track was one of our day hikes while in Queenstown. As you may have noticed from previous posts, Queenstown is on a lake and Glenorchy is the town located at the opposite side of the lake from the place we were staying so we decided to check it out. This was a fun day for us as you can see. If you look really hard at the waterfall picture you can see Charles, he was feeling a little "where's waldo" that day. For those of you who know Charles you can imagine he would take advantage of any opportunity to jump around rocks and see how high he can climb. This particular track didn't actually lead to the waterfall but someone, cough Charles, was determined to make their way to the water... and so we did.

I decided my time was better spent taking pictures of the monkey climbing along and to relax below and take in the scenery (wine may or may not have been involved I can't quite confirm).

Doubtful Sound

We took a little adventure out into Doubtful Sound in Fiordland. Fiordland is a fairly large region covering pretty much all of the south-western corner of the South Island. It is a mountainous region carved up by fiords, lakes, rivers, etc., but almost wholly without access by roads. So you either have to hop on a boat or hike for several days to check it out - we hopped on a boat :)

Not sure if the pics do it justice, but Doubtful Sound is a fairly narrow body of water - it looks kindof like a smallish lake back in the US - except that it is basically in a mountain range so the banks of the fiord are steep-sided mountain tops. {Now, for your history lesson, fiords are usually long, narrow bodies of water with steep sides carved out by glaciers and they are usually connected to the sea, although they mostly contain fresh water.}

Needless to say, the place is really, really cool. The name Doubtful Sound was given by Captain Cook because, as he was sailing in the Tasman Sea around NZ, the entrance to Doubtful Sound looked so narrow that he did not think he could navigate his ship inland through it. It is an almost untouched rain forest-type area with endangered animals (see the Fiordland Yellow-Crested Penguin in pic).

Also, pretty sure we found Treebeard out there in the forest and I swear he winked at me :) - you can see some of his smaller brothers in the pics. The scene for Fangorn Forest was shot nearby as all the old trees have all sorts of moss and plants growing on them - would be a pretty erie forest at night. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, my apologies. For those of you who do, welcome to the cool club.

In short, any of you guys planning to come over here to visit need to check out this place.

Take care,

Lana & Charles

PS - GO HEELS!

The many views of Queenstown

Thought we should provide a sampling (however small) of the views of Queenstown while we were there. Most pics were taken in the afternoon or evening after we had played outside all day and were enjoying some vino and the forgotten joys of chairs :)

Queenstown feels like Jackson Hole (for those of you who've been there) or probably any of the cool US mountain towns. Its pretty laid back, pretty much alot of folks coming to enjoy the outdoors and nightlife and do some expensive shopping (Lana restrained herself fairly well).

Our house was close enough to walk into town, so we enjoyed the bars several times. The most fun night probably was a DJ/reggae night at a local bar. The rastafarians (sp) turned out strong and the main event was a 50 ish hippie with dreads down to his feet (no kidding) who rapped and sang for a little more than an hour - pretty high energy set for a slightly older gentleman.

If NZ has a music genre to define it, it has to be reggae. BTW - the best by far name of a reggae band we've heard so far is "Katchafire" - we'll see them soon and report on the tunes.

Of course, Queenstown is only the base for probably to best scenery and outdoors fun in the whole of NZ, so we'll get everyone some blogs of the adventures we had while down there. Suffice it to say that you could spend an entire summer in Queenstown and still not be satisfied, but it sure would be fun to try :)

More to follow . . .

Drive to Queenstown aka The Adventure Capital of the World

We left our house sit in Blenheim on December 1st and traveled down to Christchurch by a bus to purchase a car. It was about a 5 hour bus trip and we couldn't wait to get off especially because the guy in front of us began hurling his brains out just as we got into town.

We are now the proud owners of a 1998 Honda Accord! While we were in Blenheim we met a lot of really nice people and at Thanksgiving we met a really lovely lady and her son (She is actually from New Mexico) and her husband was kind enough to put us up in Christchurch for the night (he is living there temporarily while going to university to become a landscape architect so he can ditch his old job as a farmer - amazing mid-life decision!).

The next day we headed down to Queenstown to stay at a house Charles found for us. The home was absolutely gorgeous, it was set up in the mountain side and our front door opened up to a view of the mountains, lake and town below. [Most of the pictures of Queenstown were taken from our front porch - there will be a whole lot more to come of those . . .]

Anyway, the drive South took us over and around the Southern Alps which were beautiful; not to mention the mountain lakes we saw which are so clear the water took on an electric blue tint! Had to stop by one and have lunch and a beer :)

Sorry for the long delay on the blog, but we will keep them coming to keep you guys warm in the winter :)

Love to all,

Lana and Charles

Nelson Lakes

Hi Everyone, so sorry we have fallen behind. We have done a ton of traveling throughout the South island and have had very limited access to the internet. Before we left our last house sit in Blenheim we made one last camping/hiking trip to Nelson Lakes National Park. This park has two lakes hidden between some beautiful mountains. We hiked around one side of the lake and camped out for the night. It was a beautiful trip with the exception of sandflies. We need to work on finding a more powerful bug spray. :)

More pics to come asap - hope everyone is preparing for a wonderful holiday! We get to have our first Christmas in summer . .. not that NC is very cold these past few years, but beers on the beach might be a good substitute for a white Christmas. We'll report later . ..

Be in touch soon