We have just returned from our nine day trip to the South Island of New Zealand. It was truly an amazing and beautiful place to go visit. The weather was a bit cooler than here in Singapore, but a nice change for us. We had a nine day trip itinerary to follow which took us to a new place every day or two. We were mostly along the West coast of New Zealand then toward the end of our trip we went inland. We rented a car so that we could take our time and just enjoy the drive around NZ. Sheep are everywhere in NZ, even way up on the mountains. So most of the time driving you saw lots of sheep, cows, and lots of mountains.
I have to say the most amazing part of NZ was to see the Glaciers!! I never thought that I would ever get to see a galcier let alone walk on top of one. All week we were trying to get up on a helicopter to see the glaciers, but the weather would not cooperate. It rained pretty much everyday we were there. The last day we were at Mt. Cook which has the five glaciers around it, and were hoping we could do it there. We were in luck, the weather was clear, and we decided to do it. So, we got to see Mt. Cook, the five glaciers, and had a snow landing on Franz Josef Glacier. It had just snowed on top of the mountains that morning so we had fresh snow to step on. Daddy and Grayden threw snow balls at eachother, it was great packing snow. Grayden did so good on the helicopter, and even wore his headphones. There was another little girl that was 16 months old on our helicopter, so I think that helped.
We also took a boat ride around a river called the Tasman River which is basically created from the glaciers melting. In this river are giant iceburgs that have come off the glaciers, I mean they are huge. They fall off the glacier into the river and then come up from out of the water. They said they are usually one meter still under the water that you can not see. Everyday the glaciers are melting, and moving. The one day we were at the Fox Glacier, a small piece of the bottom of it fell off, and created a big surge in the river that was coming out it. Truly an amazing thing to see. You could hear things cracking and falling off of the glaciers when we would sit still in the boat. I was scared that if something fell off of these things while we were in the river, it would be bad news. They said one of the iceburgs had just fallen off about three weeks ago and created a huge surge in the river. They had just finished with a tour on the river when it happened, good thing.
Also, I am sure that you all know Lord of the Rings was filmed in NZ, so we got to see a few locations where it was filmed. One of Brian's favorite movies, so he was excited to see those locations.
I will try to get some pictures out for everyone to see.
