Why you should come to New Zealand.

Cody made this great video of when he was here in New Zealand. Enjoy!!
(make sure you have the sound on)

New Zealand from cody elam on Vimeo.

Fun Pictures

I didn't do a very good job at putting this posts in chronological order. I have some fun pictures I am going to post from different times during our trip.

Queenstown

In Queenstown we found about these hot tubs that look over the mountains and the shot over river. They were amazing. They wouldn't let all five of us in one so we had two in rooms next to each other. Each room had their own hot tub with retractable glass garage doors. In the cold, you could still see out and above but you could open them at your leisure. If the water got to hot, you push a button and water cold water falls from above. It was amazing and so relaxing! I recommend it to anyone who is in Queenstown.

Mirror lake outside of Milford Sounds

We had a lot of lunches outside. Pictures from our Tunnel Beach picnic to come.

Te Anau, Can believe how big this fish Kit caught was. (hee hee)

Lake Te Anau

Old Cromwell.... Check into the next post to see what happens

Rob Roy Glacier Trail

When we stayed in Wanaka, we wanted to see a Glacier and decided the Rob Roy Glacier Trail was the best idea for us. Rob Roy Glacier Trail in the lonely planet book is considered an easy to moderate trail, I think that may be a misprint. The trail was much harder than we thought. It started off with a 40 meter swing bridge over a rushing river. It was around a 2 hour hike switching back and forth up the mountain to the Glacier. Most of it followed a beautiful river and through a beautiful beech forest carpeted with ferns. It was absolutely worth the hard hike once we got up to the glacier. We brought our lunch, and halfway up we were pretty hungry, so we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch of pb&j sandwiches and chips at the foot of the glacier. The walk back down was like walking on clouds compared to the walk up the mountain.

Kit and I before we walked over the swing bridge. We had done some of these when we stayed at the Mount Aspiring Hut on Christmas break. This bridge was longer and the wind was so fierce it pushed the bridge all over the place. Cody danced across the bridge and Kit was fine also. Barb and I hard a really hard time crossing it. Right in the middle, I didn't think I was going to make it, I had to look ahead at Kit and just keep walking.

Barb and Dave Crossing the Bridge

The fern/ Beech Forest

Beautiful view of the rushing water

almost there

waterfalls

We're there!!!

The Glacier. It was hard to take a picture because it was so cloudy and it reflected back on the snow.

Cody and a waterfall

The Elams

Back at the Carpark!!

It was overall a beautiful hike! More pictures to come soon....

Milford Sound

Milford Sound is in the Fiordland National Park on the South West side of the South Island. It is about 8 miles long that comes from the Tasman Sea. Milford Sound gets more rain per year than anywhere else in New Zealand. We were lucky to have a cloudy/ sunny day. It was cold on the cruise, but beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful and and some say it is the 8th wonder of the world.





Here is a view of the Tasman Sea















Fur Seals basking in the sun.
It was amazing watching them climb up the rocks and bark at each other.














Twice we saw a pod of dolphins.
They were so cute and loved jumping out of the water for us.

so many waterfalls, the pictures don't do the waterfalls justice. Some of them were so tall and one was twice as long as Niagara Falls.





























Our boat.














Pictures from the bottom deck of the boat. Kit and I are standing on a huge anchor.

From Coast to Coast

The past two weeks have been spent with the Elams. Kits parents arrived on Monday February 22nd and Cody arrived a day later. We spent the first week hanging out around Dunedin, showing them the sites. We took a day trip to the Moeraki Boulders and ate a fabulous meal at a local restaurant there. On Friday we drove to Te Anau and then on to Milford Sounds in the Fiordlands on Saturday. We took a two hour boat tour of the Sound and saw fur seals, dolphins, the Tasman sea, and beautiful waterfalls. Then on Sunday we drove to Queenstown. In Queenstown we went to hot pools where we had private rooms that over looked the mountains and the shotover river. On Monday we drove to Wanaka and went mountain biking, hiking to see glaciers and relaxing. We drove home on Thursday and spent the last couple days relaxing around Dunedin. We spent alot of time in our Van and we ended up driving coast to coast. It was a perfect trip and we miss them already. I will post picture in installments since there are so many of them.

The Van!

Brothers

Moeraki Boulders
It took millions of years for these to be made and they are perfectly round.

Cody running up Baldwin street. He felt like he was dying about halfway up it.

The Elam kids having fun