Our Love for Kiwis... Chapter 1

Well have we got stories for you! Sit back and relax because our recount of 10 days in New Zealand is likely going to take up more than one blog posting!! :) First, meet our trusty travel buddy - Murphy! (No tape deck, or CD player?! A rocky start...)

Nicole, Grant and I left for Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday July 6th. We didn't have much planned, other than our first night in Christchurch and our rental car pick up Saturday morning. From there we had a rough idea of where we wanted to be and when, but otherwise it was fairly open ended! We booked in at motels as we went (and scored some nice deals along the way!) and spent our days traveling between destinations in AWE of the scenery in New Zealand.
Christchurch was nice, but we arrived at midnight and left at 9am... so we didn't see much other than the main Cathedral Square in the downtown. The road out of town toward Dunedin reminded us of Hwy 7 in Markham - all the stores and gas stations and car sales places :) On the way to Dunedin we stopped a few times for photo-ops (ie. small town nowhere apparently famous for salmon fishing? awesome!).

Also we stopped in a town called Geraldine for a peak at their 'gourmet cheese factory'. Turns out this was actually just a small storefront on the local strip. Oh well, everyone needs a claim to fame! And cheese 'factories' were abundant on this trip - Kiwis love their cheese apparently!

Near the end of the day, we stopped at a place called Shag Point, clearly for the amusement of a sign photo. Then it turned out that this point was also a great place to see fur seals and penguins (score!). So Nicole hasn't seen any penguins yet and it was sunset... so we thought we would see what we could before it got really dark - we didn't have any torches with us (oops, flashlights). Anyways, no penguins, but some pretty photos AND what's that over there? OO Fur seals! EEP! There's another one about 15 feet from us! Scared the life out of us but they were so neat to see up close!



We stayed Saturday night in Dunedin - a pretty low-key city.
The next morning we visited the steepest street in the world - Baldwin St. We decided that the residents must be so annoyed with noisy visitors at 8am :)

Then we drove out on the peninsula there to see if we could do a wildlife tour. No luck with the tour, but 1 hour of amazing views as the morning mist lifted off the water (and so many sheep on the most steep mountain terrain!).

Then we passed through the Cadbury Factory before leaving town... don't worry we kept it under control! But it was fun and there were SO many kinds of chocolate there - it was like Willy Wonka in real life!!


Our drive out to the west coast/Fiordland was pretty quiet, with one stop for lunch and another to take photos with a giant trout. We enjoy the enormous monuments to wildlife :)

Also, hey sheep - smile for mom!







Sunday evening we did a tour in Te Anau on the south-west coast which took us into a glowworm cave! It was VERY cool - including the 15 minute boat ride out to the cave which was REALLY chilly :) Basically we walked into this cave where there was a decent sized underwater stream (Grant spotted some fish!) and at the end of the walkway there are no more lights and 12 of us got into a small boat (think a row boat size) and the guide pulled us along in darkness/silence and as the light of the tunnel disappeared, our eyes adjusted to the darkness. On the walls there were clumps of green lights twinkling - the worms! It was very cool and peaceful (once my desire for a night light went away!), and all we could hear was the water and the bump of the boat as it knocked the wall of the cave softly. It was really awesome.

Okay I'm going to finish this post here and put up some photos for you to check out! Then I will write more - we're only on day 3! It really was a whirlwind tour - everyday we had something to look forward to! And as I just said to mom on skype, it was like driving through a postcard for 10 days. You wouldn't believe it unless you were there :)

xoxoxoo the kids Down Under

ps. Siobhan - happy first day back! I'm sure Kirsten will be glad to see you walk through the doors! Let me know how the cupcakes go!