When we arrived in Christchurch we had booked an upgraded campervan. The campervan was more luxury than the Wicked, we even had a small kitchenette. After our pick-up we decided to drive directly to Queenstown because of the bad weather conditions. But suddenly we had a problem with the car and had to go back to the rental company. So unfortunately our first day was lost. The next day we drove again to Queenstown, we passed beautiful lake Tekapo and lake Pukaki. However, the weather was again not that good. Although we were impressed, the rainy weather ruined our view.

In Queenstown we had some nice weather and we slept at a beautiful free campground, directly at the lake. Queenstown reminded us of Serfaus and other Austrian wintersport villages, only Queenstown is ten times more beautiful because of it’s nature. The ambience in this wintersport town is really good. We grabbed a burger at the famous Fergburger, which was so tasty (but we still think Betty’s is the best!). We took the cable car up the mountain and had a ludge tour (like “rodelen)”  upon the mountain. We also had a look at the famous bungee jump, but we were too chicken to do this haha.

Next day the weather forecast in Milford Sound seemed to be really good, something that does not often happen in the fjords. The road to Milford Sound was incredibly beautiful, we stopped many times. About every half hour you pass another nature scenery. We took a cruise in Milford Sound and enjoyed the amazing trip. Milford Sound has beautiful fjords with waterfalls, wildlife and scenery. If the world was flat this would have been definitely the end. Somewhere around Wanaka (another wintersport village) we slept.

In this night the earthquake around Christchurch happened. We didn’t felt anything but we were shocked by the news. After we had some calls to the Netherlands, since our family was afraid, we drove to the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. The weather was so bad, it rained the entire day. But as we have learnt here, the weather is changing any minute so we decided to do the Glacier walk of two hours and luckily we didn’t have any rain. The Valley walk was so incredible, the glaciers are really impressive. When we were done, the rain came again and we jumped in some hot pools and had a relaxing day.

Abel Tasman was our next stop, this was still a 5 hour drive. We passed again some extraordinary nature, which was wonderful. And we stopped at the biggest swingbridge of New-Zealand, we were so afraid when we stood in the middle of the bridge. I’m still shaking when I’m thinking of this bridge! In Abel Tasman the weather was really good, we never had it in New Zealand. Kayaking around Abel Tasman National park is a really famous thing to do, so we did it as well. And it was so worth it. The kayaks were not made for Dutch people, so we couldn’t stretch our legs for hours! We did kayak around the Islands and there were lots of wild seals who joined us, so special!

We slept again at a nice free camp and the next day we headed on to Marbourough Sound for some wine tasting. The wineries are so nice and for a small contribution you can have different tastes of so many different wines. We went to 3 wineries: Cloudy Bay, Huai and Winter Hill, and spent the lovely afternoon at the gardens in the sun with nice wines. This day was a nice ending of our trip in the South Islands. We drove the next morning to Picton where the ferry was waiting for us, on our way to the ferry we noticed the impact of the earthquake (see picture). In my next blog I will tell you more about the cross over and about our last week in the Northern Island of New-Zealand.