Driving on from Manapouri we soon arrived at Queenstown, where we caught a gondola (cable car) to the top of Mount Bruce. This afforded us with amazing views over the surrounding mountains, including the Remarkables where part of Lord of the Rings was filmed. Whilst watching the bungy-jumping, we headed off on a chair-lift to the top of the luge run. Now, this wasn't your tea-tray style luge, don't worry, just a plastic kart with steering and interesting brakes! We all went on the scenic run, which had a passing place so you could stop and take photos. This was windy and steep enough for us - heaven knows what the advanced run was like! It was absolutely brilliant though, and we all enjoyed Queenstown immensely.
We camped at Wanaka, which was reached over an extremely scenic mountain pass through the Cardrona valley and various other ski fields. Wanaka did have a ski-town-type feel to it, and seemed very full of pretentious young skiers with their silly hats!
The next day was one of our few rainy ones, with very poor visibility. This was quite annoying as it meant we didn't get to see Mount Cook or any of the other Alps that day. We were heading for the glaciers, and walked right up to the terminus of Fox Glacier - very impressive. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to walk to the terminus of Franz Josef Glacier, but we did climb to a lookout, which would have had amazing views if it wasn't for the rain. We carried on up to HariHari where we stayed the night.
The next day was our longest journey yet. We travelled through Arthur's Pass National Park, via the route of that name. It was glorious, with fresh snow, and as it was a Sunday, the place was teeming with kids playing, including skating on a frozen lake - amazing! The views were once again, breathtaking and seemed to go on forever. Arriving on the other side, near Christchurch, the original plan was to camp at nearby Rangiora. However, we had made such good time over the pass that we decided to press on to Kaikoura. As it was Alexander's birthday (for those of you who don't know, my brother) it meant he spent the entire day driving, but we made up for it by having one of the best meals of the holiday in a really posh restaurant. It consisted of seafood for us (steak for him) including the famous Kaikoura crayfish- mouthwatering.
One of the highlights of the holiday followed the next day, with a trip to watch the famous sperm whales. Before this, we headed off to the peninsula, which had beautiful misty views of the mountains through the rising sun, and we were able to watch a seal very close up (the bulk of the colony, some 20 seals, was clearly visible on rocks further out to sea). The rock formations were really interesting, and it was bustling with life - both people and wildlife! After a quick lunch we headed off onto the boat. I had been warned that it was a bit commercialised, but WhaleWatchKaikoura was very well done I thought, with comprehensive and mostly accurate presentations (never travel with scientists!). It wasn't soon before we had seen our first whale, and we watched it for quite some time, again extremely close to the boat. In the end we saw 3 different whales, one of them twice, as well as albatross and loads more seals. They then said did we want to see some dolphins? They weren't kidding - approximately 500 cavorting dusky dolphins were the spectacle that greeted us when we reached the top deck. They were all around the boat, coming really close, and being generally very silly and playful. We watched them for ages, and I could have watched them all day, but alas we ran out of time. We finished off the day with some shopping - the perfect day!
Reluctantly leaving the town behind, we headed off to Picton where we caught our ferry, which travelled through rain and the murk, affording us with dreary views of otherwise spectacular coastline. We landed in Wellington, where we were over halfway through our holiday already!
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