Kaikoura

Our final destination was kaikoura, known for its whale watching and seals, unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to go whale watching however next to the seal colony I had been told if you walk up a slope opposite following the stream then they is a waterfall which acts as a day crèche for seal pups, they were literally hundreds squashed into a pool playing around whilst the adults stayed out at sea. They were very curious and they approached you to touching distance.

The pool where they were playing in the hundreds!

Arthurs Pass

Arthurs Pass is known as really scenic drive going from the West to the East coast, the campervan struggled but we managed to complete it running on fumes (we found out theys no petrol station during the 160km drive) we also found some friendly kia… this time we fed them some bananas

Fox Glacier / Reflection Lake

Next stop was the Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers, these are located on the west coast, they used to be huge but have shrunk to about 1/8 of their size, however they are slowly getting bigger. We also visited reflection lake, getting some really good pictures of the snow topped tallest mountain of New Zealand – Mount Cook.

Me sat in front of Fox Glacier

Mount Cook reflected perfectly in the lake

Queenstown

Our next stop was Queenstown, it is known as been a tourist place and is where bungy jumping started. I decided I was going to do a bungy jump. I chose the 134m nevis jump combo with the nevis arc swing, as you can see from the pictures ive never been as scared in my life however once I jumped it took a couple of seconds for it to register but then once it did it was a brilliant feeling

Finally on the way up!!!!!

Queenstown countryside is pretty good too :-)

Doubtful Sounds

The next day we set off for a day trip out onto the doubtful sounds, for me this has been the best place we have visted, we were going to go to milford sound however its too much of a distance out of our route plan where as the doubtful sounds is pretty much enroute.

As we pulled from the harbour, a pod of about 50 bottle nose dolphins began to chase the boat, jumping from the water and keeping up at the front

This is a mother and calf

The Scenery is unbelievable

My first introduction to the kia which is a native parrot to new Zealand was as we were waiting for our boat on the return trip and it flew down to steal my dinner. They have not yet evolved a fear of humans

It was kind enough to pose for a picture......

Then went back to stealing the dinner