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Guido's Down Under Experiences: March 2004

FlyingDutchman
2006-03-19 10:46:00

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they are back home. Afterwards I checked in at a hostel, and checked out the Canterbury Museum. I also booked myself a bus to Queenstown tomorrow morning. In the evening I sorted out all the New Zealand photos and I put the best 120 (out of more than 500) online.
Go check them out!

Mon 01 March 2004
New Zealand with Parents 2
Christchurch, New Zealand

Tomorrow my parents and sister are flying back to the Netherlands (with stopovers in Auckland, Brisbane and Kuala Lumpur), so our holiday together is almost at an end. Let me quickly summarise last week.

The 15th day (24 February) we spent in and around Queenstown. However, I did not do any adventure activities, since the weather was not good enough. So instead we drove to Arrowtown and Glenorchy, and I put all the photos on CD in the evening. On the 16th day we first drove to a deer park, right outside Queenstown. Some Lord of the Rings scenes were shot there and it is not hard to imagine why, since the views were breathtaking. In the afternoon we drove to Te Anau, where my sister and I went for a short stroll on the Kepler track. On the 17th day we woke up early in the morning, drove to Milford and had a 2-hour cruise on the Milford Sound. We got extremely lucky weatherwise, since there was no cloud in the sky, something very unusual in this rainy fiord. After the cruise we drove back to Te Anau, and my dad and sister flew over Doubtful Sound with a waterplane (I saved the money to go skydiving in Queenstown later on). The 18th day we drove to Dunedin on the East Coast, and continued on to the Otago Peninsula to see penguins and a castle. On the 19th day my sister and I did a tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory in Dunedin (the second factory on my trip) before driving to Christchurch. The 20th day in Christchurch we visited a couple that emigrated from my home town (Reuver) over 40 years ago. Later in the afternoon we drove to Lyttelton and had dinner along the Avon river in Christchurch. The 21st day (today) we went to Akaroa for a slightly disappointing cruise on the harbour (we only saw a few dolphins) and the rest of the family went souvenir shopping, while I have been sorting out the photos. We drove about 2.950 km on the South Island, totalling to 4.900 km on both islands. Aside from flying (expensive) and hiking (slow), it is the best way to see the country.