Author: travel_ri8ksv

I spent the last three days here in Queenstown, which is pretty much New Zealand’s tourist capital. It feels almost like one of the Swiss resort towns, including the beautiful scenery – and the prices… I spent the first day wandering around the town and taking a gondola ride. Yesterday I went skiing in nearby Cadrona, big for kiwi standards but tiny for Europeans. Still, the weather was gorgeous and the snow good. Today I went on a Lord of the Rings location tour to Glenorchy at the end of Lake Waikatipu, which was very lovely as well. You can’t go much more beautiful than here, really…

I’ve also been quite the social butterfly, meeting up with people I’d met in Te Anau (Misato from the hostel and Charlotte and Miriam from the Doubtful Sound tour) as well as hanging out with people met here at the YHA (American sisters Ziba and Vija from my dorm room and Aussie Dave from the Cardrona tour).

As always, you can find more photos here on Flickr.

What I haven’t managed in 10 days of traveling yet is calling my parents. The next few days I’ll be in Franz Josef, staying with my friend Kevin, who’s a glacier guide there, then I’m heading further up the west coast, one of my favorite parts of New Zealand. We’ll see how the internet situation will be…

On Friday evening, after seeing a short scenic movie about Fiordland, I went to see the Glowworm Caves on the other side of Lake Te Anau. The caves were quite impressive, masses of water rushing through them, and the glowworms pretty – as long as you don’t look at them too closely, that is. 🙂 I’ve seen more glowworms in the Waitomo Caves in the North Island, but it was a very nice way to spend the evening.

The best bit, though, was that it started snowing just as we got back – and in the morning everything was white and lovely. It was the perfect day for the trip to Doubtful Sound, which turned out to be incredibly gorgeous! First a boat ride across Lake Manapouri, then an excursion down the powerstation there, before we rode a bus through the mountains and snowy forests to Doubtful. The cruise couldn’t have been any better – we even saw a school of dolphins at play. Simply an amazing day, and I ended it by watching a couple of movies in our dorm room with two German girls.

As the photo album here on the site doesn’t seem to work, you can see the rest of the pictures here on Flickr.

Today I’m taking it easy here in Te Anau – my bus to Queenstown only leaves at 5pm.

I’m here in Te Anau at the border of Fjordland for four nights, which is very nice, especially because the dorm room at the hostel is like a separate bungalow with its own kitchen, bathroom and even a TV. Yesterday I went to see the famous Milford Sound, which was very impressive, despite the wet weather. We saw snow on the way there, which was awesome, and I took a ton of photos, of course. 🙂

Today is a bit quieter, which suits me well because I caught a cold in Dunedin and am sniffling and coughing. I went for a walk along Lake Te Anau (the second biggest lake in New Zealand) and am now catching up on photo uploads. After that I’ll head out to see a scenic movie at the local cinema and then take a tour to a Glowworm Cave on the other side of the lake. Tomorrow I’m going to Doubtful Sound, which is supposed to be even more stunning then Milford. We’ll see, I guess… *g*

Btw, exam results are back, and I passed all three papers, with B, B+ and A+. That means I should get an email about graduation from Victoria any day now…

A whole lot more here, including a few little movies.