first blog

We have just returned from our new zealand holidays.
We travelled daily and packed into a fine tarago van all six of us liesl from south africa ant em jessi ian and my self.The van did us well. We could pack all of our bags in the boot space mainly becos liesl knows how to travel light - her bag only weighed 6.9 kg. congratulations liesl mine was the heaviest bag but i travel with all the electrical equiptment to keep the family going - the power packs to cameras phones ipods and the car ipod speaker connection.
we landed on wednesday at christchurch after leaving melbourne at 10ish. allowing for the 2 hour time difference,we landed at about 4 and we went off to collect the van and headed over the mountains to greymouth for our first night - the scenery was magnificent and the roads excellent.
we ate at a Speights ale house and had a wonderful meal and then retired to bed.
Thursday morning we explored greymouth a cute town on the west coast. Then we headed off down the west coast to Haast via the Franz Josef glacier. The Fox Glacier wasnt able to be viewed as the road had been washed away after 400ml of rain on the monday we were happy to have avoided that downpour!
The kids all were impressed with the glacier even though we werent able to get up close to it . It had the usual blue glacier colour and was quite impressive. We lunched and continued on our way to Haast.
Haast has a population of about 0. well may be a few more but it isnt very big. We, ie em liesl and i did the 4km walk back from the beach and we all dined in the pub attached to the motel.
Friday morning saw us head off towards queenstown down some of the most spectacular roads and scenery that we saw on our trip. We lunched in Wanaka a small lake side town - very swiss like - just needed the cows with bells.
Ian out did himself picking the apartment in queenstown. The views were out of this world and the kitchen facilities wonderful.
Jessi had elected to cook that night so we went exploring for a supermarket. Ian managed to find a mediterranean supermarket and jessi found the ingredients to cook a fish and vegetarian feast. The colours of the food were magnificent. It was washed down with some fine local new zealand sav blancs.
We had hoped to fly down to milford sound to do a cruise the next morning but this was cancelled due to high winds so we booked a road trip down the skippers canyon road and then a jet boat ride. The jet boat ride was uniformly enjoyed whilst the road trip inspired different degrees of terror in the different people on the trip. Ian and I had done it 30 or so years ago and knew what to expect. A dirt road single vehicle track with long drops on the side of the road down to a valley.
We all survived and went on to enjoy the jet boat trip. Photos will be posted on picassa later.
We then headed off to Lake Tekapo. Once again ian did well with his choice of accommodation.
We had chinese for tea and slept well .
We packed the car for the last long drive and set off for christchurch the next morning. We stayed in the middle of christchurch and had home cooked seafood pasta and salad for tea after a pub meal next to the avon river for lunch.
We were up at 4am today to catch the plane home and now are all exhausted.
Ant and jess are off to japan on wednesday and i have to be at ants place at about 4:30am to drive them to the airport - all a bit exhausting.
Unlike frannies blog, this blog will only appear for holidays and trips. Enjoy