Heading Home

The view from the porch of our "crib" in Te Anau


Well, unfortunately all good things must come to an end, and so it is with our New Zealand trip. Three months in this beautiful country and we feel as if we've barely scratched the surface. We depart Queenstown today for Auckland where we remain overnight and then catch the return flight to Honolulu on Saturday morning (NZ time). We then spend a few days there before flying home to Vancouver on the 23rd.

The past 5 days in Queenstown have been as nice as ever - a nice wrapup to our time in NZ. We spent days in both Glenorchy and in Arrowtown just enjoying the scenery and the trails since the weather continued to cooperate with lots of sun and mild temps. Here are a few final photos.




Went back up to the Deer Park one day to take advantage of the sunny day. Was a bit overcast when we first visited, plus it's just a real nice place to go and spend time near the city. The photo above is taken from one of the Lord of the Rings filming locations, but with the correct perspective showing Queenstown and the Lake below.



One fun thing we did was to go on the jet boats on the Shotover River near here. They're essentially 12 person jet skis that go zipping along the vertical walls of the Shotover River canyon at speeds of up to 50 mph, then are thrown into a spin by the driver. The result is a 360 deg. spin going from high speed to zero within the narrow canyon. Makes for a real adrenalin rush. The photo above just shows a glimpse of the river from the departure ramp. The real fun starts about 300 yards downstream.



A final look at the Remarkables from the living room of our apartment in Queenstown.

Looks like we timed this pretty well weather-wise. After a solid week of uninterrupted sunshine we have a rainy day for our flight north to Auckland.

Time to go load the car for the drive to the airport. Kia Ora from New Zealand everyone.