I’m having some problems with WordPress at the moment delaying my uploads. In the course of trying to fix them, I saw this post from 12th Oct was never published! From halfway down the North Island of New Zealand…

I hadn’t appreciated that the North Island has mountain ranges as well as the South Island. We drove south around the enormous Lake Taupo, stopping for a delicious lunch of fish and chips made with fresh snapper. Stuffed to the gills, we drove further around the lake and then up to skirted the edge of Mount Ruapehu, the highest mountain in the North Island, made famous as Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings films. It wasn’t long before we had climbed above the snow line. Incredibly, for anyone not familiar with mountainous regions, this colossal mountain was more or less invisible due to the low cloud, as the snow fell. This👇🏼was the most I could see of any mountain, and I don’t think this one was Ruapehu!

A very palatial looking café and hotel appeared out of the mist some way up, with about 10 snowmen that had been constructed (no doubt by kids on school holidays) on the lawn in front of it.

We sought warmth, a refuge and a cup of tea in the café, and through a short series of miscommunications with the very keen and attentive waitress, inadvertently ended up with a delicious cream tea each! We thought we were full, but where there’s a will, there’s a way! Don’t mind if I do… 😋 We had the usual cream or jam first debate, and the do you call it a “scon” or “scohne”. I pulled the “I’m from Dorset and that’s a darn sight nearer Devon than anyone else” card, so to my mind won. Of course, my uncle was also born and bred in Dorset, but he’s lived in NZ for over thirty years, which has clearly messed with his memory of how these things should be. I’ll leave it to readers to continue those time honoured debates. The main lesson being, when the universe offers you such delights, you should make jolly sure you enjoy them.

Apologies – I’ve just realised this post should’ve come before the Milford Sound one! Hmmm if I can rejig them I will!…

We awoke to gloriously sunny and clear weather and more stupendous views:

We drove on and as the landscape kept changing, opening out into wide valleys framed by mountains, then narrowing into forested areas, we passed a sign saying “Latitude 45 degrees South”. The temperature was getting appreciably cooler although in the truck it was easy to not notice how we were climbing until my ears popped.

Near Lake Gunn I finally managed to capture a tui singing:

The many lookout lay bys were beautiful with increasingly dramatic mountain views. This was a special moment at one such viewpoint:

More views en route…

We stopped off at the Chasm waterfall, which was torrential even though there hadn’t been so much rain here lately. There’s a short bushwalk that takes you through a beautifully lush wood, everywhere dripping with fresh water, sun sparkling off the leaves, to the top of the thundering waterfall.

On returning to the car park, Stu and I found the others all busy being entertained by a couple of kea birds. We were hoping to see some in the wild and we weren’t disappointed. They seemed pretty untroubled by the humans around, pecking away at anything peckable at, true to form.

From this point we drove up to the Homer Tunnel, which works its way down through the heart of Homer Saddle in the Darran Mountain range. Apparently this 1.2km long tunnel was initially dug by five men using only picks and wheelbarrows in 1935. Other relief workers during the Depression then joined the work and it took five years to pierce the mountain, though due to problems with avalanches and the constant stream of snow melt coming into the tunnel, and also World War II, it wasn’t completed and opened until 1953. The men lived in tents in the mountains while they were working on it.

The tunnel has since been widened and lighting has now been installed to make it possible and safer for the tourist coaches to get through on their way to Milford Sound.

As we approached the tunnel, we were at the snow line. Throughout NZ there are great lookout lay-bys you can pull into to look at the stupendous views, and we often ended up leap frogging these with various camper vans on the route. As you approach the Homer Tunnel, though, there’s a risk of avalanche, so you are no longer allowed to stop beyond a certain point (except when there’s a queue of traffic waiting to enter the tunnel, of course). Entrance to the tunnel is controlled by traffic lights, so the traffic is only coming through in one direction at a time, so when you make this journey to Milford Sound, you have to allow about half an hour extra in case you hit a red light.

The earliest photo I could take after exiting the tunnel was this:

We made our way along this beautiful road all the way down into Milford Sound area, where Stu and Tash and I hopped on a boat and K and L went for a walk (having done several boat rides on the Sound before).

The guide’s information on this cruise was really good, but I didn’t manage to note it all down. One thing they did say was that Milford Sound is actually not really a Sound but a Fijord, because it opens out to the sea. It has both freshwater and sea water in it, providing a unique habitat for all kinds of creatures. We didn’t see any dolphins, though they are sometimes seen there. But we did see a penguin preening himself. He was too far away for me to get a picture though.

The largest glacier in New Zealand is the Tasman, and I think they said that it is melting on average 60cm per day now. At the current rate, there won’t be any glaciers left in NZ within the next fifty years. I will have to come back again to try and see one, as our attempts this time were a wash out.

Mitre Peak is the iconic peak that people most easily associate with Milford Sound. It looms in a craggy and formidable way, snow sprinkled, just opposite the jetty where the cruises set off. Apparently one local man has climbed it three times bare foot!

If they go 6 days without rain here it’s considered a drought! If it rains when you’re here, the trip is only more spectacular due to the many waterfalls that proliferate. While we were there, it didn’t rain, but there were still a few permanent waterfalls that fall from a huge height for us to marvel at. Stirling Falls was one of them. It falls three times the height of Niagara Falls! 😲

Here is Lady Bowen Falls:

The cruise boat skippers take delight in seeing how close to these high waterfalls they can sail. On our boat, the crew set out a tray with a load of glasses on it and balanced it on the very front of the boat. The skipper managed to come so close to the waterfall that all the glasses filled with pure glacial water. We then had the chance to drink it of course!

I got chatting with one of the crew of the boat, who’s half Fijian, half Kiwi. He has lived here and worked on the boats for about two years. I guess he must be in his mid 20s.

I asked him what it was like being so cut off from the rest of the world (it takes him half a day to get to the nearest town, even, and WiFi is so expensive it’s pretty much off limits to him). He said to be honest that all the goings on in the world seem pretty meaningless and trifling when you’re surrounded by the product of hundreds of thousands of years worth of glaciation every day. He pointed out the three visible “shelves” in the rock on either side of the Sound (you might be able to see them in the picture above), said each one had been created by an ice age, and divers have found two more beneath the surface as well.

He talked about the climate change issue. From his point of view, it’s sad, but the reality is that most of the species of animal now alive will be extinct before too long if you talk in terms of ice ages, anyway. He expressed a similar point of view to others I’ve met on my travels in NZ that we are mistaken if we think we are capable of really having much effect on the colossal forces of nature at work. But then his dad did work in the oil industry. He definitely has a point though, and it continues to give me much food for thought.

However, it is worth noting that within minutes of having made this statement, he was talking to us about the importance of not feeding kea, because when we give them food (even nuts and fruit) that they wouldn’t naturally be able to find, recent research has shown that it acts like cocaine on them, giving them such a sugar rush that they often become aggressive towards each other. In other words, the world may be going to hell in a hand cart, but there’s no need for us to give it a helping hand, I suppose.

Kea are highly intelligent birds, also having an eye to the main chance. Apparently a pack of keas have been known to hunt and kill a sheep before. The guy on the boat told us a story about a group of kea that had recently been seen dragging cones across a road to stop the cars so they could beg for food!

Kea have also been seen riding on the roof of coaches and cars through the Homer Tunnel to save them the bother of having to fly over the top! They stay hunkered down on the vehicles until they get down to Milford, then fly off. We actually saw a kea sitting on the back of a coach roof, pecking at the rubber seal to the windows, something they’re infamous for.

Some more images from the trip:

Here you can see where the vegetation has grown so well it has become too heavy and slipped into the water, taking some of the rock face with it:

I had my first taste of Lemon & Paeroa on this trip too. Cheers! 😋

You have to drive South around three mountain ranges and through (yes, through) another mountain in order to reach Milford Sound (unless you’re prepared to carry all your stuff on your back and walk the Routeburn Track, which joins Glenorchy to the Milford Road).

As we continued on towards Knobs Flat, in the direction of Milford Sound, Ken said he thought the Milford Road is the most beautiful road in New Zealand. I was on the verge of protesting again, given the awesomely beautiful roads we’d already driven on. I thought we’d pretty much seen mountains every which way mountains could be. Then, suddenly, this view opened out in front of us:

The change of colour, scope, light, perspective; everything. Wow. I tried to take a panoramic pic but my phone couldn’t cope with the immensity of the panorama. Yes the same phone that took all those other panoramas. Somehow 360 degrees was about 180 degrees too much for it! Wow.

We arrived at Knobs Flat 👆🏼 and the young lady welcoming us offered us the office’s stash of board games. Hurray! It was a bit limited but I picked up Scrabble for our evening’s entertainment (enhanced by wine) and we settled in to the very comfortable cabins.

It has to be said, the quality of showers in New Zealand motels is variable but generally was much better than I’d expect in the UK. Ironically, here in the middle of nowhere, with no WiFi or phone signal, the running water and electricity worked just fine and in fact, the showers were some of the best we’d experienced! And they had a two hob gas burner with mini grill in each cabin too.

In the late afternoon, we followed the ranger’s suggestion of going for a short walk to a hidden waterfall. I suspect her estimation of it being a fifteen minute walk was probably borne out of spending most of her time the last few years mainly in this rather remote spot, where minutes or hours probably don’t really signify much beyond helping to provide an indication of when the sun might rise or set. There’s a lot to be said for joining a slower pace of living in our often far too hurried world, I think. About which more later…

We had a little adventure on the walk when we came to the stream the lady had mentioned and were faced with a choice of two possible tree trunks laying across it over which to cross the raging torrent. Both looked like they’d be tricky to not lose your footing on, and also tricky to disembark from at the other side. Intrepid explorers that we are, refusing to be defeated, we set off in our various conditions of health and mobility, with various different ways of negotiating this hurdle, and all made it to the other side triumphantly (though maybe a bit wary about the return journey).

When we reached the waterfall after a lot of clambering over rocks and tree roots in the forest, it was indeed spectacularly high. I also saw what she meant when she said I could try wild swimming in the pool if I wanted but it was pretty small, though deep and the waterfall would probably flay me alive. Also, I’m not sure I’d have been able to get down there or back up again.

Stu enjoyed taking some decent shots with his proper camera here. After marvelling for a while at the waterfall, we made our way back. Having got most of the way back with no trouble, Ken stepped remarkably confidently over a slippery log and promptly slipped on something small the other side, falling to the ground! Ouch! That’s normally my trick. Fortunately he seemed relatively unscathed so we continued on. And we all made it back over the stream again one way or another.

So the wine we cracked open over dinner was of course purely medicinal! Here’s Stu polishing off our delicious über macaroni cheese:

After dinner I introduced the assembled company to my usual old skool party tricks. (“I pass the scissors crossed”, which Stu guessed almost straight away, the clever bean (maybe it was something in that macaroni cheese?!?!??) and “Magic finger”, which as usual no one managed to guess – yes, I’m still doing that one… anyone who’s been around on such occasions, sorry, not sorry! Anyone who’s not experienced these brain teasers, bring me a bottle of wine some time and I’ll introduce you to them.) Then, we played Scrabble, which Tash won with great panache, while the guys talked photography together.

We stayed at Knobs Flat for two nights, which gave me time to really savour the quiet, and to enjoy the prolific birdsong particularly at dawn and dusk. Below is a video recording some particularly beautiful birdsong. I’ve no idea what the bird was, but the way its song echoed around the quiet valley was quite something. The Milford Road which runs right past here is pretty busy with coaches and cars going to Milford Sound especially during the day, but it is a very beautiful place.

We drove to the south of Lake Wakatipu and then continued on via Kingston and Mossburn to Te Anau, where we had a break before continuing back North up to Knobs Flat.

Most of the countryside consisted of open valleys of farmland surrounded by steep hills, some rugged, some gently green and brown, the odd tree, lots of sheep, a few highland cows and “humbug cows” as I call them and the odd field of more normal dairy herds.

An ethical interlude…

There was a noticeable increase in the number of deer farms in this region too. It was very weird seeing these normally shy and hidden animals in a herd in a field surrounded by a fence. Deer farming has taken off here in the last few years as a way of dealing with the over population of deer, caused by the fact that they are not native to New Zealand, but were introduced by colonisers from the British empire, so they could enjoy shooting them for sport. Because deer aren’t native, they have no natural predators, so the deer population has exploded in size and has been decimating lots of native plants and animals. Great Britain is really not so great. The more I learn on my travels about our dealings with the world, the more appalled I am, frankly.

In response to this problem with the deer, some bright spark developed a method of capturing them by shooting nets from helicopters (they had to use helicopters because the terrain is so mountainous there would be no other way of catching them), and then putting the deer into paddocks surrounded by deer proof fences.

A fashion for venison meat has also taken off in New Zealand, perhaps fuelled partly by the thought that this is one way of getting rid of a pest.

I have so many ethical problems with all of this, and as always with ethical issues, any response or action ends up being a trade off.

Ever since we adopted a rescue cat about a year ago, I’ve found myself becoming much more sensitised towards the experiences of animals. Our cat, Xena (Warrior Princess) (who’s scared of the cat flap), has such a particular personality, particular likes and dislikes, and she’s so responsive to affection and kindness (when she wants to be, obviously – she is a cat after all!). I find that now I can’t look at animals and not consider how they might be experiencing life.

From that standpoint the deer hunting is awful. But of course from the other standpoint, the deer’s decimation of native habitats and creatures is also awful. So I find myself wondering why those colonisers were so thoughtless as to introduce non native species in the first place. And, as is often the case in these sorts of circumstances, I find myself thinking that in order to get to where I think we should be going in terms of looking after our planet, I really wouldn’t start from here. But we have to start from where we are of course. Humph.

Generally speaking I have been trying to eat less meat and consume less animal products, in a bid to do my bit to discourage the over production of it all, which is decimating whole swathes of countryside all over the world and also causing very poor distribution of food among human populations as so much of it goes to feed the animals we insist on proliferating to feed our insatiable appetites. But I must confess I did have a venison burger in Dunedin. And I have eaten more meat on my journey so far than I ever would have done at home. It is quite tricky to avoid in a country whose main industries include meat and dairy farming.

I’m no expert in these things, and I’m aware there are massive economic issues for farmers, too. But is forceably separating mother cows from their baby calves in order to keep being able to syphon off their milk really an acceptable practice? My uncle says the cows make an agonising noise when this happens. I’m not surprised! Then there are these “Peach teats; calves love em” here which are like enormous false udders where a whole herd of calves feed, tails wagging 19 to the dozen. It’s very cute to watch, but what are they drinking? I don’t actually know. If they were drinking natural cows’ milk then why is it more economic for them to drink it in this unnatural way than to get it from their mothers? I have no idea.

Professor David Clough (Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Chester), whose work on theology and animals is second to none, has worked with others to create this website, seeking to at least challenge churches to take these ethical issues seriously and begin to change their behaviour accordingly: https://www.becreaturekind.org/.

One of his very practical suggestions is that instead of having the default food options set up to favour meat eating, that we #defaultveg. In other words, that the default norm is to offer food that is veggie, and if people want to eat meat they have to explicitly opt for that. Because everyone can eat veggie food. I love this idea for its simplicity and practicality as well as for its potential to facilitate huge cultural change. We do a lot of cooking for others back at home, and we tend to #defaultveg, partly because it’s our preference anyway ethically and in terms of health and it’s cheaper and we love veggie food, but it’s also because it’s simpler because if it’s gluten free and veggie (vegan if possible) then pretty much everyone can eat it so you only have to make one big pot of something to share.

Here are the Prof’s general top tips for dealing with this issue, summarised wholly inadequately and overly simplistically by me (for more detail visit the website or contact him):

We have a choice about what we eat. Other animals don’t. So it’s for us to take responsibility for our choices. To vastly improve the situation we could:

A) eat less meat (consider reducing the number of days/week or meals/day we eat meat or if we don’t eat it often, consider becoming vegetarian or vegan) and consume less dairy products

B) consume fewer animal products (in cosmetics, leather goods etc)

C) when we do eat meat, dairy or buy other animal products or things with other animal products in them, try to find a source for those things that is concerned for the welfare of the animals

Here endeth the ethical interlude…for now, at least.

The next surprise was that we were all going to Milford Sound together, staying a couple of nights in a place en route called Knobs Flat, which has no mobile signal and no WiFi (part of my excuse for not managing to keep up with the blog!! But really, I loved being off line, as I always do on those occasions). Then after we’d visited Milford Sound, we were going to stay altogether for a night in Te Anau, at the lodge (which is a converted convent – about which more later). Then Ken and Les were driving off back up the country to Wellington while Stu and Tash and I continued on around the Southernmost part of the South Island, via Invercargill, Bluff and Owaka and up to Dunedin for a couple of nights before flying back up the Wellington to rejoin Ken and Les.

This whole trip was quite an operation! I’m so grateful for the organisational skills of Les and Tash particularly to put it all together.

Anyway, so here’s a map of our route around the South Island (apologies it’s tricky to read place names… hmmm must learn how to get google maps to do this for me!):

In spite of talking about jet boats and wannabe sky divers, I don’t think I’ve fully communicated the rich playboy paradise that Queenstown is. On the lake at any time of day, you can see paragliders, jet skis etc, alongside the slower cruise boats and yachts. We also saw these crazy “Hydro attack” shark semi submersible vessels on the lake all the time. I did capture some video myself, but to really grasp what they are and with it, what Queenstown is essentially about, the publicity video is better (you might have to copy and paste the link): https://youtu.be/tfhkpJbeOlk

Even just watching that now is making me feel wobbly. Yet another thing I won’t be doing any time soon!

Ah! And there’s one more observation I’d like to make about Queenstown. It struck me, from the moment I first saw all those beautiful snow capped mountains behind Lake Wakatipu, that if you were born in Queenstown, surely you’d be disappointed by the rest of the world. How can anywhere else compete with such beauty? And yet, apparently, people who are born here often can’t wait to escape it. Well, I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere for all of us.

Our last morning in Queenstown was somewhat marred by the fact that some (not very) bright young thing had parked right across the driveway to the garage. After spending about an hour on the phone and knocking on the door of various people who might have been able to help but couldn’t really, the rest of us went off for a lovely breakfast while Uncle Ken sat lying in wait like a hungry lion for either the offending oik (technical term) or the council traffic wardens to put in an appearance.

While I had possibly the most delux granola ever, Ken had words with the oik, who it turned out had been staying overnight for a party and hadn’t noticed the driveway when he parked. We had just returned from breakfast and got the truck out of the garage and were about to drive off when the traffic wardens turned up, about an hour and a half after we’d called them, looking puzzled about where the offending car was. Ah well.

Here was my deluxe granola breakfast:

I liked the signs on the restrooms in the café:

“Servants” was the door to the broom cupboard.

I had another cuppa as Ken finally got his breakfast and everyone else did bits of shopping that needed doing, and Stu picked up the rental car, ready for our next leg of the journey…

On our second morning in Queenstown we woke up to clearer skies and no rain! Hurrah! And I decided it was time for another swim in the lake (Lake Wakatipu). Since it was literally on our doorstop. It’d be rude not to, right? This was where I swam, and the view:

I thought of this swim as a kind of prayer for my fellow breast cancer survivor friend Sharon, whose husband tragically died suddenly recently, and for their children. I’m drafting this post on the day of his funeral. Sharon is one person who has really encouraged me in cold water swimming, especially at our cancer swims at the outdoor pool in Hathersage not far from where I live. It was poignant to be swimming in such a beautiful place. Sharon and her whole family are great at living life to the full, so it seemed a fitting tribute.

Afterwards, I hot footed it back up the hill to the apartment (taking all of 5 minutes) and jumped in the warm shower. Lovely!

After breakfast, we drove along the lake up to Glenorchy. We were met by awesome view after awesome view…

You can hear a lovely Chinese guy educating me all about the sunlight in this video. I fear I was not fully concentrating on what he was trying to tell me. Being dumbfounded by the scale of the view, watching that paraglider. “Would paragliding here be terrifying or just gobsmackingky amazing?” I wondered. The Chinese guy told me later that he’d saved up all his holidays from work to be able to come back here and sky dive, but so far the weather was letting him down. He was hoping for an opportunity in Glenorchy though. “Good on you,” I said, thinking “There’s another thing I’m never going to do!”

Here’s Ken’s latte bowl, he managed to persuade the café staff to make, as a break between all the awe inspiring mountains. Then I’ll just post up more views. A picture tells a thousand words after all.

A bit of yoga to greet the awesome mountains. I wish I knew the moves. I might’ve joined in. It seemed appropriate.

These pictures 👇🏼 are of the end of the Routeburn track, which my Dad walked when he and Mum were over here quite a few years ago:

For scale, see if you can spot Tash in the distance:

From the Routeburn track end, we made our way back along this stunning route to Queenstown again. All the pictures of water are of Lake Wakatipu, which extends a long way in several directions (in a kind of Harry Potter lightning bolt scar shape on a grand scale).

To get some sort of concept of scale, see if you can spot my cousin Stu 👆🏼. He’s unusually tall at about 2m 6cm (6 foot 9 inches), by the way. And yet… where is he???

And then we went up Coronet Peak to the snow line (in the car) and on to Arrowtown, and the settlement where the Chinese gold miners lived back in the mid 1800s.

View from Coronet Peak:

A magnificent magnolia tree:

Imagine living in the snowy winter in these tiny one room stone huts. It was a hard life. And not always particularly fruitful, although most of the Chinese men who lived it managed one way or another to make some money to send back home.

On the way back to our apartment, we finally saw the “Remarkables” and the mountains opposite the apartment in something like all their glory:

Evening in Queenstown:

Another magnificent magnolia tree in the Queenstown Gardens, which were 5 minutes’ walk from where we were staying. Magnolia always reminds me of my friend and colleague Diane, who loved it. I salute you, Diane, and pray for your family, friends and all whose lives were touched by yours, which burned very brightly, though for too short a time. 🙏

We enjoyed the comforts of a meal in the Irish pub, and watched the sun go down. And then popped to the famous Patagonia Chocolatier’s for a posh ice cream on the way home.

Surprise no.1 in Queenstown, we stayed in a very nice apartment with this view from the French windows (called “ranch sliders” here). Obligatory jaw drop again.

Surprise no.2, my cousin Stu and his partner Tash flew down from Wellington to rejoin us for this part of our journey.

And there were many more surprises to come.

But first, a walk along the waterfront:

Kowhai tree 👇🏼; tui birds love to feed off the nectar in these yellow flowers.

My efforts to capture tui song continue (we think this might have been a chick just learning a few notes, who didn’t yet have the full range):

In the rich boys’ playground of Queenstown, where bungee jumping was invented, and the general idea seems to find a means of travelling as fast as possible, with no fear of gravity or water, the children’s playground has slides ending in a river. Start em young, that’s what I say!

Having lined our ribs satisfactorily with breakfast at my uncle’s favourite café, I was let into my next surprise…

Stu and Tash were proposing to treat me to a jet boat ride. This very enterprising waiter assured us that a jet boat ride is the most dangerous, death defying thing you can do in the whole of Queenstown, which is saying something, given it’s the home of bungee. Great. What is this kiwi obsession with going up high things and walking over see through glass, wire mesh, or just jumping off, or powering through water at such a rate of knots that your face threatens to fall off??? And how much longer will the combined obligations of politeness and “Well it’s not every day I get the chance to be somewhere this awesome and do this sort of thing” persuade me to keep saying “Yes” to everything???! (How long is a piece of string…?! 😂)

On the way to the jet boat we stopped off at a winery just up the road in Cromwell (an area famous for its fruit production) and indulged in a mini wine tasting with lunch, which warmed me up nicely and provided some Dutch courage for the challenge ahead.

I must admit, the jet boat ride was great fun. And it was raining, so hey, we were wet anyway. I smelt a rat when Tash said to Stu, “I’ll sit behind the driver”, but I didn’t quite figure out why. Oh my. Several 360 degree spins in both directions later in a fast flowing glacial river, and I realised. I realised a lot of things, including why there were two hair dryers and an enormous open fire in the lobby of the place! I’ve been in some heavy rain before, but I’ve never travelled so fast on a river that the rain pelts your face like bullets. I held my hood over my freezing forehead most of the time, but then when he did the spins, we were under strict instructions to hold on with both hands and push our feet against the floor in front to brace ourselves. During which time my hood invariably blew off my face. But when in Queenstown…

This 👆🏼was the river we jet boated on. At one point, our driver cut the engine and let us spin around with the current, admiring the jagged rocks on every side above us. Then we were off again, narrowly dodging jutting out rock faces at ridiculous speed, effortlessly against or with the fast current of the river.

On the way back from our jet boating adventure, we stopped off at the world’s first bungee jump bridge, started by A J Hackett (the first crazy person to bungee jump off the Eiffel Tower. A kiwi, of course). Already cold and wet, we enjoyed watching other, more crazy people jumping off the bridge from the safety of the viewing platform, sipping a very comforting hot chocolate. Stu watched and it made him think, “Hmmm maybe I could do that…?” I watched and thought, “OK, so I am never doing that. Not ever.” 😂

Having agreed we’d had enough excitement for one day, we hived off back to the apartment to recharge for the next day in this extraordinary place…

We continued south, through Cadrona (a ski field) with its pub that, like so many things here is “world famous in New Zealand”! Cadrona used to be the only way into Queenstown, so this pub was where people could stop and change horses etc.

Opposite the pub there is this extraordinary fence, which exists to raise awareness and funding for breast cancer. Having suffered from breast cancer myself, I was very happy to pop some cash in the box and take this photo. Everything here is in a huge scale, the number of donated bras is no exception!

From here, we climbed through the distinctive Crowne Range, with its golden green grass and steep, smooth hills on either side of the valley.

After a while of driving through this beautiful landscape, we reached the top and the lookout that was supposed to be the most spectacular view we’d seen yet. This was what we saw…

My aunt and uncle went a bit quiet at this point, fearing that it might be so cloudy that we wouldn’t get to see the view they knew was there. But moments later, we descended beneath the cloud and, moment by moment on our descent into Queenstown, this awesomeness greeted us:

Welcome to Queenstown. Obligatory jaw drop 😲