With one hour to go at work I excitedly rang Julia to go over the last few items for tomorrow's trip. It was Wednesday afternoon and we were flying to New Zealand the next day. Jokingly I remarked on how long it took me to find my passport and how close I was to calling her to cancel the trip. At this point Julia realised that she still hasn't packed her passport. What followed was total shock and disbelief. The realisation that her passport had expired a month ago hit hard. We spent the following 12 hours agonising on what would happen tomorrow and what if we couldn't get the passport renewed before our flight. Well, we shouldn't have. Even more unbelievably the Australian Passport Office had her passport ready in only 4 hours.
The first night of our trip we spent in Christchurch. Having arrived there on a school night we were surprised by the number of drunken louts on the city streets. These scenes made Melbourne's King St on a Saturday night look like a well behaved quire boy. They say things usually look better in the morning, I wish I could say that for Christchurch. I guess you got the picture, we were not impressed by Christchurch, but thankfully from then on everything was better, much better.The next two nights we we stayed in Franz Josef, staying at YHA. This reminded us both of our younger days, except that this was possibly the nicest hostel I've ever seen. Here, we did a full day guided glacier walk which was definitely the highlight of our trip and provided some awesome photos.
From Franz Josef we made the long drive south to Te Anau. The drive was kept interesting by some great scenery and an unexpected stop at Stu's Fly Shop. I bought a "Fish Before You Die" t-shirt here, which I refused to take off for the remainder of our trip.
Unfortunately NZ's infamous westerly winds played havoc not only with my fishing plans, but also with other activities on our trip. Our sea kayaking tour of Milford Sound was canceled due to the weather, but we still got to experience the Sound in all it's glory from a small tour cruise ship. The usually boring tour guide commentary was kept interesting with the skipper's fishing stories.
From Te Anau we drove to the final destination of our trip, Lake Tekapo. The scenery around Lake Tekapo is simply magnificent, and what made it even more special was that we could enjoy the scenery from every room of our apartment. I finally caught my first South Island trout at Tekapo, it was no monster, but a tick on the to do list nonetheless.
As is always the case the trip came to an end much earlier than we wanted it to. For both Julia and I it was the most enjoyable trip and we are already planning our next SI visit (although, might land at Wellington next time).
