Ah, New Zealand, the clean air, the nice people, great scenery and good times have made this a great stop!

Aside from a mix up at the YHA in Christchurch, where they lost our reservation--we stayed someplace else that night, its been a great trip here on the South Island. Our rental car has helped a lot, its a Subaru Outback and we even picked up an air matress to sleep in it..but more on that later!

We did some sightseeing in Christchurch, which was our first stop after flying from Sydney. Here's a shot from the Arts Centre in Christchurch.

A weather note, even thought its the summer, we've been really cold during our time here, fleece everyday and generally long underwear also. It's unseasonable cold here for summer and we just aren't used to it, coming from Southeast Asia!

We stayed a few days in Christchurch and then we moved on to our first Servas homestay in Amberley Beach with Tom and Anne. Thanks to both of them for a very interesting visit! Also, thanks to Lesley Evans for meeting us in Christchurch to give us the Servas guide!

From Amberley Beach we took a day trip to Hanmer Springs, a small town with a spa
with thermal pools and sulphur waters. The scenery was beautiful on the trip--here are some cows that were very noisy during our picnic lunch - tailgate style.

Matt's sharp eye caught a small town on the map called Strachans (Matt's mom's side of the family), so of course, we had to go see it! We drove an hour out of our way to find it. Here's what we found--a sign near a farm that's about it, oh, and this view.

Our next stop was Dunedin, a great old city with lovely architecture thanks to the wealth from the Scottish immigrants in the late 1800's - Victorian times...

We had a great time touring around the town
and we took a tour of the Speights Brewery--Here's Matt checking out the copper kettles that held the spring water used for the beer.

Dunedin is near to the Otago Peninsula, which had lots of rolling hills and sheep that had a grazing view of the South Pacific.

We took a long drive down the east coast of the south island from Dunedin through the Catlins, a national park. We saw the Nuggets, a group of rocks just along the shore. We spent a really cold night in the car that night--the view of the ocean at the camp site was amazing, and the air mattress was quite comfy, but we nearly froze. Here we are before we realized how cold it would be.

Next time we camp, it will be in the hopefully warmer, North Island.

After our cold night, we headed from the bottom of the South Island up to Te Anau, home to Lake Te Anau and some great day hikes as well as the more famous tracks or walks as they are called here--Kepler and Milford are some of the more famous. We didn't do either because of our lack of gear--you need good trekking shoes and warm stuff as the walks are ususally 3-4 days on the trail.

We did some day hiking along the Kepler Track and saw a beautiful rainbow
in Te Anau.

Our next drive took us through the Erlington Valley on our way to the Milford Sound, which is actually a fiord. The scenery was just beautiful, with misty mountains and signs with ideas for what else to do.

At the Milford Sound, we boarded a boat for an overnight cruise--the Friendship cruise was wonderful for its scenery and hospitality of the crew. We were just two of eight on the whole boat and we were able to see scenery, and more scenery, that we would not have been able to if we had stayed on land.

By far, the highlight of the tour were the bottlenose dolphins that loved swimming (or coasting) right in front of the boat! These three dolphins had so much fun gliding in the wake of the boat, at least it looked like fun as they jumped over and under each other.

As part of our tour, we had a short time to get back on land and see the end of the Milford Track. The sign for the end is covered in used hiking boots as a sort of shrine--not sure if they were really all worn through on the walk though!

Here's a shot of Mount Pembroke at sunset taken by Matt from the bow of the boat. The next day we got up early and did some kayaking --sure enough, a dolphin showed up again-this time just swimming underneath our kayaks.

Well this has been a really busy and exciting couple of weeks, so we are laying low for the rest of the week in Wanaka for Christmas. Wanaka is a cute little town with great views of the mountains and some good day trips for hiking and wine tasting. Matt's brains for Christmas trivia won us a $50 NZ bar tab at the local watering hole, so we even have a few free beers coming to us this week. We've even got a tree decorated with small flags of the countries we have been to!

Happy Holidays everyone! We know we haven't called home much, but we think of all of our family and friends in the US and all the new friends we have made here on the road all the time! We will be thinking of you and miss everyone. We hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas. We love to hear from you as you keep in touch by email and blog--even more so during the holidays!

Peace and Love

Intrepid Travellers