It has been a while since our last post, we had some bad weather that meant we did not have a lot to write about or show you, followed by three days that were beautiful, which we did our best to take advantage of by being outside at all times :->. The rain has started up again though, so we are spending a morning catching up on the blog while waiting to find out if they open up the road to Milford Sound (closed yesterday and this morning due to avalanche danger).

A bit over a week ago we were in the Marlborough region, known for its wines. Here is a shot of one of the wineries that we visited, it was quite windy, but rather nice overall, and we had a great lunch at one of the wineries.

From there we headed over to the coast at Kaikoura. The view from our hotel room looked out over a bay to the mountains. California has lots of the same types of terrain as New Zealand, in fact the drive to Kaikoura could have been over on the coast in Northern California. As you can see here though it at times looks like someone took the Sierra Nevada mountain range and shoved it over to the coast.

Kaikoura also had a nice winery that had me wandering around and taking pictures of nearby farm animals and grape vines while Lisa did a tasting. Still can't get used to the color of the water, so many great shades of blue, green, and everything in between...

We tried to do a boat trip to swim with dolphins while we were in Kaikoura, but the wind was too strong for us to go out in the boat. It was a large boat and they must have had 40 people waiting, so we figured it must have been a pretty bad forecast for them to cancel the trip and give everyone their money back... We left Kaikoura and headed for Arthur's Pass, the highest point on a drive across the south island. During the drive we had the most wind that either of us had ever felt while driving. It turns out that a truck had blown over in 100km/hr plus winds near Kaikoura. I guess it might not have been fun out on the water.

The shot below is on the trip to Arthur's Pass. More photogenic sheep and mountains. :)

There is an amazing collection of rock outcroppings just before you get to Arthur's Pass. We were pretty sure we recognized some of the landscape from the movies of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" and "The Lord of the Rings". I'm quite afraid of heights, so although it looks like I'm right near the edge of a cliff I can report that it was in fact quite safe (as was Lisa in the second shot). Definitely not as many warning signs as you would get in the US though.


On the way from the rocks to Arthur's Pass we came across the very beautiful Lake Pearson. Lake Hamre was nowhere to be found (might need to go to Norway).

In Arthur's Pass it was raining and clouds were down low enough that we could not appreciate the scenery, so after checking into our rented hiker's cabin we turned around and headed back the way we had come for half an hour or so to where we had last seen some blue sky. On our way back we were rewarded with a rainbow.

We did a pair of hikes, the first one through dense beech forest, and the second climbing an open hill for a nice view of the surrounding areas. You can see the road where we started to the left of Lisa's cap.
At the very top there were great views in all directions, and we came across a sheep that had not made it. (Not sure how it died, as far as I know there are no predators on the island that are large enough to take on a sheep, so possibly just old age.)

A road shot heading back towards Arthur's Pass...

In Arthur's Pass we picked up some supplies for dinner and were greeted outside by a Kea bird, the world's only alpine parrot. There are signs all over about not feeding them, but based on his behavior I'd say not everyone follows those requests. In some areas they have become quite the pests, biting at any part of the car that they can get their beak around.

From Arthur's Pass we finished the drive over to the west coast of the south island. It was raining and cloudy for nearly all of the trip, so we took in a local museum that had displays about the local history of gold and coal mining. In the evening we made it down to Fox Glacier where we were staying in the Mountain View B&B, and it definitely lived up to its name. It only cleared for about half an hour in the evening, but it was enough to get a nice shot over their pond.

The next morning we went over to Fox Glacier, but decided to just do a couple of shorter hikes rather than a long one onto the glacier (you had to be guided if you wanted to go onto the glacier). Here we are posing in front of the glacier which is one of those things that it is tough to get a picture of that captures just how huge it appears in person.

After the morning at the glacier we headed over to the beach which had an old mining site and a "Miner's Tunnel". I was pretty excited about the tunnel, since it appeared that you had free access to it and I figured we could wander around the front edge and look at all the old mining equipment. In fact we should have taken the name literally, it was a tunnel that had been carved not to do any mining, but to let miners get through a hill over by the coast. So it was a drippy 30 foot tunnel with a view of the coast from the other end. The highlight wound up being the old mining equipment that we had passed a mile or two before, which is seen below...

The next day we headed over to Franz Joseph glacier, which was just a bit north of Fox. Did another couple of day hikes out to the glacier, but the weather did not tempt us into heading out onto the ice.


It was still cloudy when we headed to bed that night, but cleared up during the night. I woke up at 2am or so (not sure why) and looked outside. By the light of the full moon I could clearly see the mountains, so I decided that I should head back out to the lake and take a couple of pictures. The shot below is at 2am, lit only by the moon.

The next morning it was clouding up again as we headed further south and back across the mountains to Wanaka and Queenstown. But it did clear up for a few days while we were there, so we'll post those photos soon!