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That was the name of a scenic overlook on the Arthurs Pass highway from the West Coast back to Christchurch. Torrential rains, flash flooding and gale-force winds, but scenic in its own way. We're on the North Island now in Auckland.

Still no photo access, but I updated links to the Shotover River Jet boat pictures a couple posts down. Welcome back to Mass. vacationers!

Water spins clockwise while gurgling down the drain. Which way does it go up there?

Hello all... Eric and I are checking in from a hotel (but not our hotel) in Fox Glacier on the West Coast of the South Island after the kids and wives are asleep. I've got some great pictures to upload but they'll have to wait until we find a PC with an accessible USB port or some broadband (ha!)

After the rainiest-day-of-the-year adventure at Milford Sound yesterday and lingering carsickness among the Andresens, we made a temporary change of plans to skip the West Coast and go back to Christchurch the way we came. However, Friday morning (remember, we're in your future) started sunny and we got a report from the glacier that the weather was "fine" (which actually means "fair" here.) Plans changed back, and we headed north into a sunny day: first past A.J. Hackett Bungy where we stopped to watch some poor girl leap off a bridge screaming (and live to tell about it).



Next stop, a panoramic vista that happened to be at the edge of an airfield, that happened to have a biplane doing aerial stunts such as loops and barrel rolls. We had lunch -- including the biggest and thickest pancakes ever seen on this Earth -- in a beautiful town called Wanaka at the edge of Lake Wanaka looking over to Mt. Aspiring (should be "Mt. Inspiring" according to Eric.)

Ben eating the world's thickest pancake:



Up between Lakes Hawea and Wanaka and then over Haast Pass to the West Coast with waves from the Tasman Sea crashing on the shore. The scenery became merely stunning (as opposed to the awe-inspiring I've come to expect) until we reached the Fox Glacier.

Where it was raining, with mist obscuring Mt. Cook. :-(

And then, as all the kids hiked (er, "tramped") 30 minutes to a viewing area near the terminal face of the glacier, the clouds parted and we were treated to a sunny view of the glacier face, Mt. Cook and the deep, deep valley. Life is indeed good.



Tomorrow, up the coast past Franz Josef Glacier and then back across the Southern Alps at Arthurs Pass to Christchurch, where we'll catch a flight to Auckland and the North Island. Thanks for all your comments!

This is a kiwi pun which we can explain later. Suffice it to say that we had an adventure today. We took the early (6:30am) bus from Queenstown toward Milford Sound to experience what Rudyard Kipling called "the eighth wonder of the world". What we got where beautiful waterfalls, and rivers flowing, all due to the torrential rain pounding the glass top of our motor coach. When we reached Milford Sound itself we found a gale force storm and all ships sailings were cancelled. Not a typical occurence around here. So now we are on our way back to Queenstown. We feel a bit like the Skipper and Gilligan....

Update: Here's an example of spontaneous waterfalls crashing down the mountains:

When we left Christchurch we crossed the Rakaia river at a town called, strangley enough, Rakaia. Directly after the river there was a 20 foot statue of a salmon. You cannot imagine how hard it is to drive past a place like that.

At the undersea world mentioned earlier in Harrison's post we viewed rainbow and brown trout in their natural habitat (although clearly encouraged by the regular feedings of trout food). I am not kidding when I tell you that the trout were as large as 25 pounds.

There was a newspaper clipping of a man who recently caught a trout of 17.5kg (times 2.2 to get pounds). It looked more like a salmon.

My fishing time comes when we get to Lake Taupo in the North Island. I am licking my chops.

If you want to order Sprite - you ask for Lemonade
If you want to order potato chips - you ask for crisps
If you want French Fries - you ask for chips
You don't walk on the sidewalk - you walk on the footpath.
Food is also called tucker
A shopping cart is called a trolley
Over here there are no stop signs - but you do have to 'give way'
a bathroom is called a toilet or a Loo
Everybodies favorite team is the New Zealand All Blacks. It is a Rugby team.
If you want to barbecue then you use the barbie.
They play a game called cricket here that is like baseball.... but different.
The steering in a car is on the opposite side and you drive on the left hand side of the road.

Your Mates,

Harrison and Toby

This is Harrison's dad typing in a message from Harrison:

We have been doing lot's of fun things on our trip. So far my favorite has been the jet boat ride. The boat was really fast (85km/hr) and the driver was crazy. He would spin around and go so close to rocks that it seemed like we would hit them.

Then we went on a slower boat that was a steamship. We got to go into the engine room. It was really hot and noisy.

We saw actual KIWI birds eating when we went to the bird sanctuary and they run kind of funny. It is like they are waddling across the ground.

We went on a gondola ride up a mountain. It was very steep and I wanted to climb it like a rock climber but dad wouldn't let me.

On the road between Christchurch and Queenstown we saw about a 15,000 sheep..... maybe even more than that. Every where you turn in NZ there are sheep, sheep, sheep.

They raise deer on farms and we saw many herds of them along the road as well.

We saw Mt. Cook, which is the tallest mountain in NZ and we stopped a Lake Tekapo (pronounced tea kuh poe) and skipped rocks. My best was a triple skipper.

Tomorrow we are going to the glaciers which are big ice rivers.

The weather has been warm but kind of rainy and all of the flooding is in the North Island while we are in the bottom of the South. It's like if the floods were in San Francisco but we are in San Diego.

We saw the river where my dad bungy jumped a long time ago and we fed some big ol' trout today at the underwater world. It was a room, underneath Lake Wakatipu where the fish hung out.

Well class... it is time for me to go. Tell Mrs. Gaffer that I am doing my homework. I wish you were all here.

Harrison

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(Extreme sports, in this case, although the weather has turned from rain to sun and back in an instant several times already.) In addition to bungee/bungy jumping, another New Zealand invention is the jet boat. We woke up after a night of pouring rain and a burglar alarm going off at 5:10 am in the pub next door to an overcast sky and reservations to ride a jet boat on the Shotover River. Click the "Shotover Jet Boats" link to the right to learn more. Suffice it to say that they're fast and we had a blast -- especially Ben!

[Update: These links should work now]
Getting ready to ride the Shotover Jet Boats
Doing a 360 on the jet boat

We had lunch on a steamship on the large lake on which Queenstown is situated. Again, the weather cleared so we could see the remarkable mountains called... the Remarkables. We had time in the afternoon to visit the Kiwi and Birdlife Park (link to right)



(This one is stuffed, but we saw four real instances of the New Zealand national bird.) The kids finished up the day with an incredibly intricate indoor miniature golf course called Caddyshack City. We're all having a blast and recovering from jet lag. Tomorrow: Milford Sound cruise for the Andresens and a gondola ride for the Haynors.

...can be done in one day, if you choose a small enough country and then the shortest cross-section!

Here's some more detail on yesterday's trip from Christchurch to Queenstown -- about 480 km/300 mi. We had planned to go down the east coast and cut across, but were told that it is not as scenic as going inland, in spite of what the map might indicate. (I should mention it was drizzling and cloudy, so it didn't seem like we'd see much of anything anyway.) Well, we turned right and the sky started to clear, and then we started seeing hills, and then snow-capped mountains, and then the bluest lake I've ever seen -- I literally laughed out loud when we came around the bend and saw it. It's called Lake Tekapo and here's a panorama view stitched from 6 pictures:

Lake Tekapo panorama (screen width)
Lake Tekapo panorama (full resolution) [Warning: 2.5MB!]

But those weren't even the tallest mountains! Here is a picture of Mt. Cook (Aoraki) over Lake Pukaki.



(The tip of Mt. Cook is peeking through the clouds just above the end of the point at the left.)

We then climbed through some scrubby hills very similar to those in central California (though much taller) to get to the gorge that leads into Queenstown (and right past the bridge where bungee jumping -- spelled "bungy" here -- was invented.)

Total drive time: 5 hours
Total elapsed time: 11 hours
Views: priceless

Day 1: We landed in Christchurch, and we did a little sightseeing. The Church, and the other buildings in Christchurch are so amazing. We took plenty of pictures, and are planning to post them on the blog. This was are only day in Christchurch, and we drove to Queenstown the day after.

Christchurch is Canterbury’s provincial capital. It is the largest city on the South Island. One of the main attractions is the Christchurch cathedral in Cathedral Square. The cathedral took 40 years to build and has many detailed wood and stone carvings. The Avon River flows through Christchurch. We saw a lot of geese and ducks at the river. There are boats for punting on the river as well. By the river is a statue of Robert Scott, an explorer who went to Antarctica.

Day 2: We drove to Queenstown today, we saw a lot of interesting things on the drive. Our first stop was at Lake Tepako, which is so blue because of the glacier dust inside it. We also saw tons of sheep, and cows, and deer on farms. We also saw Lake Pukaki, and played mini golf on the way to Queenstown. We arrived at the Arthur’s Point Tavern, near the edge of Queenstown.

Day 3: This morning we rode in a jet boat, we got soaked, and almost crashed into a couple of rocks. We plan on going down town later, and maybe some other stuff as well.

Hi everyone! Sorry that we haven't posted for a couple days, but we've been traveling non-stop and don't have internet access from the motel in Queenstown. Thank you all for adding comments and I hope that you'll continue to do so. Next message from Jason, and then I'll try to upload some photos and links to describe the amazing things we've already done.

The journey from MHT via CVG to LAX was uneventful (thankfully). We met up with our friends, the Haynors, at the LAX Hilton where the kids did some outdoor swimming. After burning off some pent-up energy we headed back to Qantas to prepare for departure. Some minor snafus over the carry-on luggage but after repacking bags (on the floor right in front of the ticket counter) we were able to get it all onto the plane. Through the magic of seat-back entertainment centers the kids were able to amuse themselves and each other until they fell asleep. We took off at 11:30 EST so we were all pretty tired. Around 9:30am EST Sunday 2/15 we crossed the International Date Line and entered your future. It is now Monday 2/16. After watching School of Rock, The Looney Tunes Adventure movie, NickTunes and several games of Tetris later we landed in Auckland, cleared immigration, customs, and ate some Sbarro pizza in the arrivals lounge. We are preparing for our next flight-- a quick hop to Christchurch (South Island). Catch you later!
Rachel says the trip was tiring but exciting.