Making our way North

The original plan was to bungee jump on Valentines Day in Queenstown, but due to the outrageous expense of the extreme sport, we settled for a phone call home and eating Thia food. After 2 days in Queenstown we went to Arrowtown, and said goodbye to Johnny and Maegen. From there we headed to Lake Wanaka and camped for a few nights. We had bought climbing gear on Christmas and finally got to use it in Wanaka.

View just outside of Queenstown

View from our campsite at Moke Lake

Fly fishing on Moke Lake

emphasis on "Fishing" not catching!

Mountains around our campsite


Rock Climbing in Wanaka

Our first climb with our own gear...Awesome!

Routeburn Track

The Routeburn Track is one of the great hikes of New Zealand. It is part of Fiordland National Park and is in the vicinity of the Milford Track and Kepler Track. We took 3 days to complete the track. It was great!

Meet "Reo" our 87' Mits. Pajero that we got back in December.

Our little home for the month next to "Reo"

The start of the Routeburn Track

Natalie and Maegen after a good up hill climb

Awesome waterfall on the Trail

We ran out of fuel for our campstove along the way. We decided our only chance of survival was to build an "illegal" camp fire. Mind you this is an area that rains 186 days a year. Johnny's face really shows the frustration of the situation. We did manage to get a fire going! We were very safe about it, and even somehow seemed to impress the Ranger when he came to "evict" us. It was actually no big drama. He ended up inviting us for tea. Well, sort of....

View from our campsite

Doubtful Sound and Lake Manapouri

As we headed west from the Catlins we stopped in Manapouri. It was from here that we set off on our two day kayaking adventure through Doubtful Sound and then back through Manapouri Lake. Doubtful Sound was beautiful and wild. On the way back the boat dropped us and our kayaks off on a remote island and we camped there for the night. The next morning we packed our gear and kayaked 15 miles back to the dock. All in all we had kayaked 35+ miles over the two days. Needless to say we were sick of kayaking.

Doubtful Sound

Doubtful Sound

Our campfire on an Island in Lake Manapouri

Cooking for 4 people is always fun on this little wolly

Heading back to mainland the next morning on Lake Manapouri