Milford Sound

Hello!
Yesterday we went on a day trip to Milford Sound. It was looong. Milford Sound by air is actually only 75 kms away but due to the endless lakes and mountains by road it takes 219kms! Sooo we got up at 6am to get to the bus stop for 7am. It's never boring travelling around this country though, if you were faced with 10 hours on a coach in the UK you'd probably give it a miss because the thing you see at the end isn't worth the trip but in NZ the scenery is literally never boring.

The driver told us loads of info on the way as well so it was interesting. The lake next to Queenstown was formed due to Maori legend by the burning of a giant while it was asleep and the claim you can prove it because the lake goes up and down 10cm every half hour and they say that's because the giants heart is still at the bottom of the lake beating because apparently you can't kill a giants heart. hmmmm.

We stopped at various places on the way. These are some mirror lakes, cool ennert?

You could drink from this stream kos the water came down fresh straight from the mountains, it was really nice and cold :)

We went through this 1.25km tunnel that goes straight through the mountain its crazy if you could actually see how big the mountain it went through was you'd be scared. It was dark and water leaked through as well!

No alternative though, theres only one road to Milford Sound and it can get closed all the time in winter because of avalanches.

There's nothing in Milford itself, just the wharf with all the tourist cruise boats and two hotels with no shops so it's better to take a day trip than to stay down there.

This is the boat we went on, it was the smallest of all the boats but it was good kos it wasn't over packed.

Whaaaaaat.

The big peak on the left is called Mitre peak, named so kos it looks like a bishops mitre. Maori have another name for it that means masculinity or something because they reckon it looks like a willy hahaha.

When it was discovered it was named Milford Haven after Milford Haven in wales where the welsh guy who found it was from. It was later changed to Milford Sound because the other twelve in the park are called sounds like Doubtful Sound. Capitan Cook named the first twelve sounds but missed out Milford thinking it was just a bay. Turns out none of the 13 in Fiordland National Park are sounds at all they're Fiords. Sounds are what they have up in Picton which are carved out by River and then became sea fed but these ones were carved by glaciers and then fed by sea. Silly Cook.

This is our Japanese friend, he spend 10 minutes trying to read the Japanese on my superdry hoodie and came to the conclusion it said "extremely dry" haha surprise surprise.  

We saw lots of fur seals too, they're cute.

They're all young males that were chucked out by the dominant male seal so they come to Milford Sound to sleep and get fat then go back and try again haha.

As you can see they sleep in the day and feed at night.

A free lunch was included in our price, it was quite nice got a good healthy lunch right there with two pieces of fruit and lots of salad in the roll! Badman.

 We got right up under this waterfall, its 50 stories high and so weird to stand under the water comes over you like mist and its really powerful. 

Dan got wet... and a little fatter by the looks of things?

He got tired of me taking pictures after that.

I can't choose what is the best thing we've done in NZ kos theres been so many amazing things but we agree that this takes the best scenery trip award because it really is just awesome. It's a shame because pictures just can't measure up to actually being there. I'm so glad we didn't miss out of this trip because it was the place I was most looking forward to seeing.

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Queenstown baby

Heyyyo sorry its been so long but when your travelling a lot its difficult to find the time to do this as well as uploading the hundreds of photos I've been taking :)

Sooo since Nelson we went onto Franz Josef for 3 nights, we did some walking for the couple of days we were there, to the glacier and to a cave!
A couple of photos from the bunch..

After Franz Josef we went down to Wanaka. It's a really nice little town. We stayed there for 3 days, we went to puzzling world which was freaky and some rooms gave me a headache :(

Oh yeah and on the way we met horses!

Water flowed up!? and a ball rolled into a hole that was up?! WHAAAT?

We went on some walks too :)

On Wednesday we arrived in Queenstown which is where we'll be till the 14th. I bought a monkey hat yesterday :)

Its really cold down here!

Because its Autumn, pretty trees :)

We're going to the i-site now to book a trip to Milford sound for tomorrow hopefully so there's some good pictures on the way ;) 

Taddly ho!

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get your sh*t stars off our flag

Heeeyo!
Friday we went kayaking at abel tasman. We left the hostel at 7am (it wasn't even light yet!) and had an hour and a bit ride there in the bus. We got out into the sea at about half 9.
We paddled to some beaches and cool islands.

It was a bit chilly and cloudy first thing but about 11 the sun came out and it was a gorgeous afternoon.

After much thought I decided to risk taking the camera out of the dry bag and taking pictures from the kayak! Risky business but no harm done and a good one of Dan.

We found this bird, named him Roger. He was cool and even did a few poses for the camera. He got 'coolest bird we've seen so far' award. Congratz Roge.

Daniel modelling a very snazzy splash skirt.

Found a mutant star fish too..

My arms and shoulders were killing by the evening and it kept me awake at night. Sad times :(

Yesterday the weather was crappy so we didn't do much, this morning was the same but it was only raining slightly this afternoon when we went for a wonder.

Stumbled across a park..

It had loads of ducks, we're going back armed with bread next!

After many an attempt I got this picture

I love ducks <3

I'll leave you with some pretty flowers, ta ta x

I hate lingerers

Heeeey from Nelson! It's said to be the sunniest place in NZ and its proving itself so far. We're moving into Autumn down under but since we got here on Monday the weathers been amazing! The sky is gorgeous so blue with them tiny wispy clouds. COOL WHIP is what comes to mind.
We went to the beach yesterday, look at the sky! It's beaut

We went exploring the city on Tuesday, it's fairly small not much happening compared to bigger cities, only 49000 people here but it's got an Aon so its on the map. Dan ate his first banana and didn't know how to peel it..

He decided he doesn't like bananas.

In other fruit related news we bought this from Countdown because it looked cool. 

It tastes like a mix of lemon and banana. Not cool.

We went to the cathedral as well which was cool, the guy in there told us he'd visited Leicester and said it was beautiful, n'awww cute. Not the word I'd use to describe Leicester though.

We've also been picnicking and reading on the park and feeding seagulls.

Going to bed early today because tomorrow we're up at 6.30 for a kayaking trip near the national park.
I'll put some pictures up after that.
toodlepip xxxx

Sailing to the other side

Hiii we're in Picton now, south island. It's so pretty :)
We got here on the ferry on Wednesday, hostel is really nice has free chocolate pudding which is really good and a hot tub :]
On Thursday we went for a long walk it had some beautiful views.
Friday we went into town and had a picnic and played mini golf..

 

In the afternoon, some people from the hostel took us down to the beach, it was preeeettty.

Today we went on another walk up a massive hill and this was what was at the top..

Tomorrow we're going up and even BIGGER hill for a children cancer charity walk, its only walkable once a year for the walk so we gotta go really.
Chao xxx

Rugby

Hello! I said I'd post pictures from Saturday so here I am :)
It was very cool, nice stadium, wasn't nearly full but good all the same!
Hurricanes won 29 - 26 against the chiefs.
My dad was watching it at home on sky and we were on TEEVVEEE! how exciting.. here we are..

I wore my tigers shirt because when it comes to rugby it's one of those times you can be proud to come from Leicester.

Here's some of my pictures from the ground and on the walk there..

Abnormally large coke can!

They used to have this really big sculpture of a spinning top here and it reminded me of Inception and I was always saying I'd get a picture of it before we left, but this is what I get for leaving it too long :(

Evening city stroll

Plane!

Captain Hurricane... not cool.

ANOTHER PLANE!

We were sat behind a dad and his two young kids and they kept asking random questions like "Has a rugby ball ever hit a camera right in the middle?" and "Has the rugby ball ever been kicked out the stadium?" they were cute.

Dan said I should take pictures of the cheerleaders :/

YES

Ta ta, thanks for looking!
See you in Picton xxx