New Zealand Honeymoon Week 1

Day 1

We arrived in Christchurch on Monday morning after a long flight with little sleep, but we wanted to try get our body clocks on NZ time so we tried to stay awake as long as we could (we did pretty well and made it to 7pm before wiping out!)

Despite being so tired, we managed to do quite a lot, including a walk around the botanical gardens, visiting the Quake City museum, walking around the town centre and getting some food from the Riverside Market.

Day 2

An early start on Tuesday to get breakfast in town (from a place that can deliver your food in a pneumatic tube!), then back to the airport to pick up our hire car. We then had a pretty long drive down to Dunedin (about 5 hours), but we stopped off at a few places along the way. We stopped off for lunch in Oamaru, which is a really nice little town with a lookout point on top of the hill where we spent some time to stretch our legs and try and spot the local wildlife. We also stopped off at the Moeraki Boulders, which are a really cool natural phenomenon.

Video of a crazy wave that soaked me on the Moeraki Boulders beach! Thankfully, I had some spare clothes in the car.

Day 3

On day 3, first we went back on ourselves a little bit to go see the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street, then we headed to the Otago Peninsula to see some wildlife. We stopped off at Larnach Castle (NZ's only castle) while it was raining, which head some spectacular views once it cleared up a bit.

We had another stop at Sandfly Bay where we saw a sea lion, before heading right to the tip of the peninsula to the Royal Albatross Centre, where we got some great views of the albatross colony. It was awesome to see them flying around, and we saw quite a few chicks waiting in their nests too! Finally, after grabbing some food, we joined a tour to watch the little blue penguins coming back in from the sea at night on Takiharuru/Pilots Beach . We only saw 3 penguins in the end (and some fur seals), but it was still a great experience.

Day 4

On Thursday, we headed to Te Anau to stay the night before heading to Milford Sound the next day. We stopped off at a few places including Nugget Point, and Gore for some lunch, where we also tried some of the locally distilled moonshine at the info site :) The scenery on the way to Te Anau was amazing and we checked into our fancy motel with a view over the lake and mountains.

Day 5

Friday was one of the highlights of our whole trip and something we both had missed out on previous visits to NZ - Milford Sound. After another spectacular drive, we arrived in Milford Sound where we boarded our boat for a 2 hour cruise around the fiord. We were pretty lucky with the weather as apparently it rains 2/3 of the time there, but we had a beautiful sunny day. It was awesome getting up close to the massive waterfalls and seeing fur seals chilling on the rocks.

Day 6

On Saturday we headed to Queenstown with a stopoff at Lumsden. More great driving and scenery. We arrived in Queenstown in the afternoon and checked into our hotel before having a wander around the town and a few drinks in the evening.

Day 7

We finished the first week with a pretty jam packed day in Queenstown. We started with a walk around the Queenstown Gardens before I convinced Fran it'd be a great idea to do the huge Nevis canyon swing (I loved it but I think Fran was less keen :D). In the afternoon, we headed up the gondola for some great views over the city and a few goes on the Skyline Luge.