Milford Sound, Skiing in Queenstown and a sick Charlie...

Right, time to do some blog catch up and due to current circumstances (which I'll get to in a bit), seems like now is a good a time as ever! Be warned, this could be a long one...

So we got to Invercargill a little over 2 weeks ago and spent most of our time there chilling out and relaxing after exploring the Catlins. The rain we first encountered in Christchurch earlier in the month seems to have caught up with us here and we were quite happy sitting in cafes hiding out from the rain.

After 2 nights we left Invercargill for Te Anau, the wind and rain unfortunately following us and booked ourselves into the YHA there as Te Anau don't seem to like people camping out in their campervans overnight. We did a day trip over to Milford Sound from Te Anau, decided against driving there ourselves since the roads were pretty bad, I don't think Charlie would have made it up those mountain paths, especially with snow chains on!

Our Milford Sound cruise was pretty amazing, I'd been before and it was nothing like the first time I went, an evening/overnight cruise which meant that after the sun went down you really couldn't see anything! It was a bit misty which meant that the largeness of the sound was lost on us, but we did get to see fur seals, dolphins and albatross!

The weather wasn't about to let up and it seemed that during our last night in Te Anau, there was another minor earthquake (there had been one the night before apparantly), as well as more rain, which meant that the Glowworm Caves were definately off the cards. So onwards to Queenstown we drove, arriving early in the afternoon of the 1st August.

We stayed in Queenstown for a total of 9 nights and 5 of those days were spent skiing at the Remarkables and Coronet Peak which were amazing. The last time I'd been skiing was nearly 10 years ago when I was still in school so the lessons I had for the first 3 days were definitely needed and by the time we left last week I was just about to do parallel turns and blue runs without too much falling over and losing control!

The last time I was in New Zealand about 3 years ago I was too chicken to do a bungee jump, and I'm afraid to say, I still was this time around! Stacy did the Nevis Bungee, a 143m drop from the middle of a suspended platform, however that wasn't for myself or Holly. We did compromise and do the Nevis Arc though, the world's highest swing, which was amazing!

We left Queenstown 2 days ago for our current location of Wanaka with the plan of just staying for one night and then heading up to the glaciers - we still haven't decided whether we're doing the Fox or Franz Joseph Glacier. However our plan was foiled somewhat when Charlie died just as we arrived into Wanaka, seems like his gearbox has collasped...!!!! So for the last 2 nights we've been camped out at the garage thats fixing him and spending our days hiding out from the rain (its still following us) in cafes or as in the case of yesterday afternoon, puzzling world!! Hoping Charlie will be fit to go by this afternoon, or tomorrow at the latest and then we'll be good to hit the road again!