New Zealand

Hi from Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand.

I flew into Christchurch on Thursday, the 17th, and hooked up with my friends Alyssa, Alyson, and Danielle. From there, we drove our rental car to Arthur's Pass (the highest town in NZ). The next morning, we hiked a torturous path up into the snowy peaks, and then later we drove to Franz Josef on the west coast. On Saturday, we took a guided walk of the Franz Josef glacier, which moves about 1 m per day and actually touches the rainforest. After a half day walk, we drove to Wanaka, stopping at Lake Hawea to watch New Zealand play Australia in Rugby Union. At the ski resort town of Wanaka, we decided to do all of our adventure stuff. I snowboarded on Sunday at Treble Cone, which got its best snow in 10 years. We met up afterwards and drove to Queenstown. Queenstown is known for adrenaline junkies who do stuff like skydiving, jetboating, bungy jumping, etc. But since we got all of that out of our system in Wanaka, our Queenstown experience is limited to hanging out in the hostel and writing in this blog from an internet cafe.

We're on our way to Te Anau to catch the glow worms and take a cruise at Doubtful Sound. From there, Alyson and I will take a long bus ride up the coast back to Christchurch, where we have catch our flights back to Australia on the 24th.

more pictures later. In the meantime, check out my flickr page (apocow username) for Whitsunday pics.