So we had our second family visit since we came out here to Middle Earth... seems that we are becoming an excuse for the inner travelers in you! My Mum came over for a bit of an explore and had the added benefit of catching up with her lovely daughter (me) and my charming chap (thats Adam). We took her to all the local spots, the rapids, hot-springs, kiwi house, mountains, Maori village, geysers, wineries and so on and so forth; Perhaps the highlight of all this for her was the sail out on the lake to see the Maori rock carvings on Errol Flinn's yacht (I'm sure that most of you who have seen her since she got home have already heard all about this but here goes). It was a beautiful day here in paradise, blue and hot with a slight wind that made for good sailing and a bit of chop on the water. We of course, being the ladies of leisure that we are did very little other than sun ourselves on deck and admire the views. As we took the corner of a hidden bay the beautiful and impressive carvings came into view and we anchored. Mum and I dived off the side to swim closer and explore. It was absolutely beautiful, the water pretty warm but refreshing and the whole experience idyllically escapist. It was only made better by hot choc and biscuits to warm us up on the return sail.
In fact she had such an awesome time that she really had to take us somewhere in return. Having family come to visit from the other side of the world really helps the appeal for time off work it seems... so we packed up old Clementine (my beautiful orange rucksack (thanks Beverly) that has seen me around the world) and headed south.
Perhaps it is an understatement to say that our eternal-summer traveling wardrobe had not prepared us for an uncharacteristic autumn chill in the mountains. The first snow had fallen early which gave Queenstown a distinctly antarctic chill that was particularly reminiscent of the
Swedish spring we had just about caught before we left Europe. In my opinion this made the whole southern experience. The grey stone buildings of Queenstown were warmed and lit my roaring open fires and the smell of burnt wood embraced the town. Adam had to tear me away from my delicious and very reasonable Vudu cafe breakfast to head down to Te Anau.
The next day we headed off early to catch the first boat trip down the Milford Sound. We stayed positive as the rain poured down the windscreen and we had the heating blaring out on full just to keep our fingers and toes from frosting. Turns out this improved the sights tenfold... how'd have thought that rain could add to the scenery. Well in New Zealand anything is possible. As we headed through the mountain passes, the rain torrented down the sheer edges of the cliffs surrounding us in temporary waterfalls. Absolutely beautiful and just fantastical really. The boat trip was great too, every corner we turned seemed to present us with a new weather front. We saw sun, rain, fog and hail at one point! We also were lucky enough to spot some dolphins diving in and out of the waves. Anyhoo, you should just check out the pics on flickr really.
After Milford and Te Anau we went up to Wanaka via Arrowtown (a really quaint little gold mining village that is pretty much un-spoilt). Its funny, we thought that the one thing that we would have to sacrifice to live here in New Zealand would be the pretty little English towns. This trip put us straight! Wanaka was gorgeous but very quite so the next night we headed back to Queenstown for bit of a send off. We ate the most incredible rustic and cheap pizza in front of a roaring open fire in some back alley called cow street. Then spent the evening not jigging (sorry Mum) to Irish music in the pub as we had a catch up with Mexico traveling companion Kay (whose also been won over by Queenstown). So there you have it. Hope you have made it this far! Sorry for the oversized blog entry.
