Days 9-11

Days 9-11

Still in NZ!

Two days ago (Monday for us, Sunday for our readers), we visited the end of the middle of nowhere. Our day looked like this:

• 7am: 2.5 hour bus ride past mountains, fields, farms to a town called Manapouri (population 300), where we boarded a boat for our next leg of the journey
• 9:45am: 45 minute boat ride (it was snowing) through fiords (water masses created by glaciers)
• 10:am: 45 minute bus through the mountains and rainforests (still raining/snowing) to a place called Doubtful Sound.

Doubtful Sound (named by sailors in the 1700s because it was ‘doubtful’ that it would be a safe place for boats to enter and exit this part of NZ). It is absolutely beautiful and completely desolate. These people don’t even want animals there… they actually trap rabbits, possums, etc so that they can keep the area a safe haven for birds. I don’t really get the logic here, but fine. It was a rainy day, so pics won’t do it justice, but it was absolutely beautiful, and we saw exactly one seal and one penguin. Both of these animals were gigantic red flags that we were in the wrong climate, and we were happy to return back to Queenstown (five hours later) where it was sunny and 50 degrees.

Yesterday, we paid a visit to my kind of nature… the vineyards. Each vineyard was super boutique… the biggest produced 6000 cases/year, the smallest produced 800 cases/year. (I think that a good size vineyard produces 30,000 cases per year, so these were obviously really small). After dinner, I went to bed, and Chad went to the casino and won some money. Everybody won yesterday!

Today, we’re heading to the glaciers, where we’ll stay for two nights. It’s a five hour drive (Chad driving on opposite sides of NZ highways—pray for us), so we’ll get up there tonight, hike tomorrow, and drive back on Friday. Rumor has it that this is as cool as it gets in NZ, so we’ll update you with pics when we get back.

PS- For those of you that don’t know, Chris Tully and Lisa got engaged… congrats guys! We’re so happy for you and can’t wait to celebrate!!

Love,
Morgs and chad