New Zealand Holiday

Hi everyone,

Just in case you've been wondering why I've been so quiet lately I thought I'd show you what I've been up too. I was on a 2 week family holiday on the magnificent South Island of New Zealand. My hubby and I had been there before - about 22 years ago - but it's such an amazingly majestic place to visit and we thought the kids would enjoy it too, especially as my son loves the Lord of the Rings movies and we would be passing through the countryside it was filmed in. I had hoped to pop photos in as we travelled around - but internet acces wasn't great so now I'm doing one big post - I'll try to pick out the highlights and not bore you though - LOL.

We landed in Christchurch and the next day there was a market in the Cathedral square. The kids loved looking at all the hand carved stone, shell and bone - most of the carvings are in traditional shapes which have specific meanings.

A lot of the city is held together with bracing and scaffolding as a result of the recent earthquakes - and we were rudely awaken at 6am on our last morning there by a 5.1 earthquake - we don't live in an earthquake zone and have decided we are happy to forgo this pleasure after this experience!!!

Our next stop was Queenstown - where we rode on the Shotover River on a jet boat - such FUN! This is the gorge we jetted through - with the driver taking great delight in getting as close to the rocks as possible!!! Richard and the kids also went quad biking - while Sarah and Richard voluntarily jumped off a 60m plus high cliff face doing the canyon swing - CRAZY!!!!!

We also rode up the gondola to the lookout over the town.

It really is a spectacular place to visit with all of it's glacial valleys and fjords!!!!

We had really fabulous weather in Queenstown but our timetable was pretty tight and unfortunately the weather turned nasty the day we went to Milford Sound. The upside was that the walls of the cliffs were just streaming with hundreds of waterfalls - the drive in was AMAZING, although my kids have decided they don't EVER need to see another waterfall -  LOL.

We were  on the last boat trip for the day around the Sound - the weather was getting pretty nasty - the wind was blowing soo hard the some of the waterfalls were being blown back up the cliffs. Poor Toby got a little seasick with the rough water.

We also went into the Te Anau glow-worm caves - a fabulous experience for all!

Our last big adventure on the trip was a half day hike up onto Fox Glacier. Here we all are at the top of the hike - it was an incredible experience but I have to say it was a whole lot easier when I did it 22 years ago - LOL. The hired hiking boots we had to wear gave me a shocking blister though - and my poor legs just didn't want to work properly for the next couple of days - I'm sooooo unfit.

Well that's my trip in a nutshell - now to catch up on all the washing, emails and getting my son ready to start High School on Friday. And then it's back to CREATING and blogging!!! My poor copics are looking all sad and neglected and I'm hoping they'll behave when I start using them again - LOL.

xXx