New Zealand - The South Island

I flew into Christchurch in the South Island. The trees were all beautiful autumn colours. I didn't realised how I'd missed autumn in England until then. The last time I was somewhere which resembled our autumn was in Cambodia at one of the temples where the ground was covered in crispy, autumn coloured leaves. It was a strange experience though as we were walking through them in flip flops. Quite different to New Zealand where it was freezing cold!
In Christchurch I climbed to the top of the cathedral tower where there were views across the city to the mountains. In the square below there was a huge chess board with pieces that were half the height of me.
I travelled South by bus through scenery that made me feel like I was in Scotland. In some of the strongest winds I think I've ever been in I went on a wildlife tour on Otago Peninsula. We battled through the wind and rain up and down steep muddy hills sometimes all having to link arms to save ourselves from being blown off the cliffs into the huge waves beneath us. We saw penguins (I love the way the waddle), little fur seals, a very angry sea lion and an extremely sweet leopard seal lying on a little beach at the side of a road. We were told to take a good look at the leopard seal as we'd probably never see one again. Apparently they're not often found in that part of the world. We also saw some Albatross chicks lying quite happily on parts of the most wind blown hills around and were very lucky to see one of the chicks dads come in to feed it. He had to make a few attempts at landing as he kept being blown off course.
When I first arrived in New Zealand I was greeted with the news that all the roads into the main skiing area of the South Island were closed due huge amounts of snow. By the time I'd been to Otago Peninsular and climbed 'the steepest street in the world' in a town called Duneden the roads had cleared enough to get through. I spent a few days skiing and snowboarding around Queenstown. The first day I was there I was able to go night skiing. It had been raining the whole day and continued all evening too which meant almost everyone had left the slopes. It was so much fun skiing down empty slopes with perfect snow in the dark. There were lights but they didn't exactly light up everywhere you wanted to ski! The winter festival was on whilst I was there so everytime I got to the bottom of the mountain I was able to watch skiers and boarders doing tricks on rails and jumps. I really loved snowboarding too although my aim to do some jumps before I left didn't quite go to plan. In fact on the last day it was so icy that I found myself giving up on the harder slopes and going back to the beginner ones - may be next time though!
On a really nice sunny day (which was quite rare whilst I was in New Zealand) I went on a boat trip along Milford Sound. Like so many of the places I've seen in New Zealand it was amazingly beautiful. The mountains came down into the water with little waterfalls flowing over the rocks. The moon was out even though it was the middle of the day and everything reflected in the water. We past a couple of seals on a rock and went right out to where the fiord met the sea. Milford Sound is actually a fiord and not a sound. It was formed by a glacier which then was replaced by the water from the sea which, as I found out on the boat trip is how fiords are formed. Sounds are actually formed by river erosion. On our way back we were joined by a group of dolphins who came right up to our boat and then raced us along.
My next stop was a tiny town called Franz Joseph. Just outside of the town is one of the only glaciers in the world that are increasing in size. I spent a day with crampons and axes climbing up some of the walls in the glacier. We walked from a car park to the glacier and when I first saw it I though we'd be having to go higher up than where I could see to as it looked much too small to be able to do any climbing on. It was only when we got closer and saw someone standing at the bottom looking the size of a very small ant in comparison to the glacier that I realised how huge it really was. It was a brilliant day but such hard work that by the end of it I hardly had the energy to swing my axes into the ice. It was so good to get back to the hostel and relax.
In Franz Joseph I met a couple of people from Austria who had hired a car and we travelled north together. As we drove up, the plants became more tropical looking. It was strange to see all sorts of palm type trees along side the normal sort of plants you'd find in England. For a few days we stayed just outside of the Able Tasman National Park in a little town called Marahau. Although it was July, they had just had a light festival and the main street and all the shop windows were lit up with Christmas lights. They even sold Christmas cake, pudding and mince pies in the supermarket. Conny and Patrick my Austrian friends had never heard of mince pies so we got some. With the lights, the Santa hanging in our hostel, our mice pies and the cold weather outside it really did feel like Christmas. The Able Tasman national park is right in the North of the South island and we walked through the rainforest along the coast, sometimes going down to the beach. The mountains were across the sea in the distance and there were little islands just off the coast. It would definitely be such an amazing place in the summer but even in the rain in the middle of winter it was still stunning and hardly anyone else was walking through so it was really peaceful.
One of the days we were there we drove up to Farewell Spit which is the Northern most point of the North Island. On the way we drove inland through snow covered hills where people were sledging and having snowball fights. When we got there it was unbelievably windy, quite like Otago Peninsula! We didn't walk on the spit but battled our way up a hill for some nice views and just about managed not to get blown off.
We got the ferry across to the North Island. After we'd past all the little islands to the South the sea became so rough that waves would hit against the ferry and come right up over the windows two floors up. Everyone was being sick but we found that a piece of chocolate cake prevented us feeling ill and we were able to enjoy rocking! When you walked around the boat one step would feel like you were being pushed down into the bottom of the boat and the next would feel like you were floating - quite a different experience.