South Island of New Zealand- Queenstown, the Remarkables and Milford Road

It's hard to put into words how absolutely AMAZING New Zealand is. I met Lisa (from high school) and Amy (her friend) over on the south island for the last 6 days. If you have never been before, GO! You will not regret it. It is actually more beautiful than the Lord of the Rings, which was filmed there. Pictures do not do it justice. I took a couple of videos which I will figure out how to upload. For now, here is my photo diary!

View of the north island from the plane


Huge mountain on the south island

We decided it would be fun to go hang gliding! (yep, that's me!)

It's a lot scarier than it looks

View of the Remarkables from the gondola

Amy, Lisa, Me

We liked the Remarkables so much we decided to drive up them! Probably should of had a 4 wheel drive...!

Laka Watakipu

Lisa and Amy bungee jumped off this bridge!

Arrowtown- they filmed some of the Lord of the Rings movies around here (obviously not in the town... :)

Driving on the other side of the road! We split up the driving. Poor Amy got stuck with all the horrible winding roads

Mirror Lake

The beginning of our climb to Lake Marian. We thought it would be a nice stoll in the woods

But it was really like climbing a mountain... literally!

We had to climb OVER this tree

But it was SO WORTH IT!

Avalanche!!

Paradise

Me attempting to walk around the lake before I gave up

Finally making it down the mountain!



Too bad we didn't see the edited sign before we started up. We thought it would take 3 hours total- more like 4-5!

Continuing on Milford Road

Going through Homer Tunnel

Only to find THIS on the other side!

The road closed the next day because of avalanches- yikes!

We were really excited to be there :)

Do we have to go?

Walk to Manapouri

The 12 km hike was worth it :)

The little shop in Te Anau where I found margarita mix! More exciting than you can imagine after not having proper margaritas for almost 4 months!

We made fajitas- can you tell I was excited?!?

Drive Wednesday morning from Te Anau to Queenstown. We were treated with a rainbow after the rain!

SHEEP! I think there are about 20 million of these around NZ

Trying to drive to Rainbow Reach. You'd think this would be sufficient warning to turn around

MOO! These were in the middle of the road

Rainy day but still ridiculously beautiful

Maybe this was what the warning was for!