ACROSS TO THE WEST
ACROSS TO THE WEST
We left Dunedin early for a four hour drive to Lake Te Anau, from where we would visit the Milford Sound. We left on State Highway 1 going west to an area known as Fjordland. Our lunch time stop was at Luggate, which had a signpost indicating distances to almost everywhere in the world. What it told us was that we were roughly equidistant between the Equator and the South Pole (see picture left). We arrived in Te Anau at the Lakefront Motel. I had been corresponding through e-mail with Megan. However, the owner was a Chilean woman called Soledad and her husband was from Patagonia. Soledad only used Megan as a postbox as far as bookings were concerned. Soledad owned 2 restaurants and her husband was chef in the Italian one and she ran a cleaning business. It is interesting that we met so many people from South America, who have now settled in New Zealand. Is it the political freedom, the stronger economy or the opportunities that drive these people to New Zealand?
Next day our trip to Milford Sound commenced with the arrival of our coach driven by Reece, a local with a natural humour who thought that Milford Sound was best viewed on a rainy day (did he come from the Lake District?) We made a few stops before reaching Milford Sound, each one more spectacular than the previous one (see picture left). The last one, at the Chasm (see picture right), Reece rated the most spectacular and that was where David had a fall badly bruising his knee. Luckily, there was no long term problem.
When we finally arrived the departure lounge resembled an airport but they were very efficient and we boarded our boat quite quickly. The journey was made in true Kiwi style, in that the boat went as close as possible to a
waterfall and we all got wet and as everybody seemed to enjoy it they did it again on the other side on the way back. It seems that Kiwis can't be boring. Sometimes we wish they were! There's no doubt, though, that Milford Sound is beautiful and the locals regard it as the 8th wonder of the world. We had booked to go to the underwater observatory but that was under whelming!
After Lake Te Anau, we drove to Arrowtown, which took us right through the centre of New Zealand and up past Kingston along Lake Wakatipu (spectacular). Arrowtown is an old gold rush town that is now very much a tourist town with many shopping opportunities (including a fabric shop) and several fine restaurants, particularly La Rumbla (where we had a wine education) and Slow Cuts, which was very friendly. However, they have excellent facilities for the locals too including 2 golf courses. Our B&B, where we had a delightful cottage room, was run by Paul, who was a keen gardener and made fantastic breakfasts. We met other guests, particularly a German lady called Susan, who had planned her trip with her husband, who subsequently died, but she still made the journey - a very brave lady.
Arrowtown was an excellent stop. We took a bus ride to Queenstown and although it is the adventure capital of New Zealand, we were very pleased we hadn't stayed there.
Next stop Wanaka.
We left Dunedin early for a four hour drive to Lake Te Anau, from where we would visit the Milford Sound. We left on State Highway 1 going west to an area known as Fjordland. Our lunch time stop was at Luggate, which had a signpost indicating distances to almost everywhere in the world. What it told us was that we were roughly equidistant between the Equator and the South Pole (see picture left). We arrived in Te Anau at the Lakefront Motel. I had been corresponding through e-mail with Megan. However, the owner was a Chilean woman called Soledad and her husband was from Patagonia. Soledad only used Megan as a postbox as far as bookings were concerned. Soledad owned 2 restaurants and her husband was chef in the Italian one and she ran a cleaning business. It is interesting that we met so many people from South America, who have now settled in New Zealand. Is it the political freedom, the stronger economy or the opportunities that drive these people to New Zealand?
Next day our trip to Milford Sound commenced with the arrival of our coach driven by Reece, a local with a natural humour who thought that Milford Sound was best viewed on a rainy day (did he come from the Lake District?) We made a few stops before reaching Milford Sound, each one more spectacular than the previous one (see picture left). The last one, at the Chasm (see picture right), Reece rated the most spectacular and that was where David had a fall badly bruising his knee. Luckily, there was no long term problem.When we finally arrived the departure lounge resembled an airport but they were very efficient and we boarded our boat quite quickly. The journey was made in true Kiwi style, in that the boat went as close as possible to a
waterfall and we all got wet and as everybody seemed to enjoy it they did it again on the other side on the way back. It seems that Kiwis can't be boring. Sometimes we wish they were! There's no doubt, though, that Milford Sound is beautiful and the locals regard it as the 8th wonder of the world. We had booked to go to the underwater observatory but that was under whelming!After Lake Te Anau, we drove to Arrowtown, which took us right through the centre of New Zealand and up past Kingston along Lake Wakatipu (spectacular). Arrowtown is an old gold rush town that is now very much a tourist town with many shopping opportunities (including a fabric shop) and several fine restaurants, particularly La Rumbla (where we had a wine education) and Slow Cuts, which was very friendly. However, they have excellent facilities for the locals too including 2 golf courses. Our B&B, where we had a delightful cottage room, was run by Paul, who was a keen gardener and made fantastic breakfasts. We met other guests, particularly a German lady called Susan, who had planned her trip with her husband, who subsequently died, but she still made the journey - a very brave lady.
Arrowtown was an excellent stop. We took a bus ride to Queenstown and although it is the adventure capital of New Zealand, we were very pleased we hadn't stayed there.
Next stop Wanaka.
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