Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Today looked promising, even some sunshine. I was even able to get out for a walk along the lake's edge before breakfast, and seeing as the path is at our front door, it was hard to resist. We decided to go up and 'do' the gondola ride in the morning, followed by our booked boat ride on the lake. We drove up to the gondola starting house, only to find that the queue was out the door and halfway down the hill, and that a parking spot was not going to be found anywhere even close in a hurry. So... We drove out along the lake to Glenorchy which was once the site of farming and even gold mining, but which is now more to do with adventure tourism such as trekking and rafting and canyoning as well as fly fishing and hunting. The weather looked horrid, but apart from a strong gusty wind, it wasn't actually all that cold, or wet. We had a coffee in the Lodge / inn / cafe before returning to Queenstown for our cruise. Dirty looking weather @ Glenorchy NZ No wonder t...

After yesterday's long and not overly rewarding day in the various buses and boats, we were wondering exactly why we had loaded ourselves onto an already almost full bus for another day. Milford Sound is a 2 hour drive from Te Anau, and this bus was picking us up on its way from Queenstown. It is a 2 hour drive from Te Anau to Milford, but our schedule had us taking 3 and so we expected a few stops. At the first stop, the bus pulled over next to what I will call a fell, a flat area of grassy / marshy looking land backed by mountains. OK, so they were capped with snow, but that by now is pretty common to us. Oh, well humour the man and take the obligatory snap and get back in out of the rain. Did I mention that it was raining still? First stop, about an hour out of Te Anau toward Milford Sound Then we stop again and are dropped off at the beginning of a boardwalk which promised a short walk alongside the Mirror Lakes. The walk itself was just a stroll past these bodies of ...

Well, this is why one comes to Te Anau - to see Doubtful and Milford Sounds. It rained all night. It rained this morning, It rained most of the day. The Doubtful Sound tour starts of with a short bus ride from Te Anau to Pearl Harbour on the edge of the next door lake, Lake Manapouri. Then it's a 1 hour boat ride right down the lake to the end of West Arm, where you disembark and get ready for another bus ride. This bus ride is made possible because they had to put a road in from Doubtful Sound to Lake Manapouri so they could build a big hydropower station. Anyhow, the bus ride is slow and cautious, with good reason; the road is a greasy gravel track which gets washed away all over the place and has a sheer drop on one side the entire way. Finally after 45minutes or so you pull up next to another drop down to the water's edge. We all had to pile out and wait on the side of the road in the rain while the morning cruise people all came up the single file steel walkway and ste...

When one checks the inter web for the top 10 things to do in Invercargill, you'd be a bit surprised to find a hardware shop at the top of the list. Some would say that's because there's nothing else here, which I would dispute as there's heaps here in this quirky large town. No, the reason that a hardware shop is on the top of the list is because its a hardware hop like no other on earth. Apart from being a fabulous hardware, and homewares and gift shop, it has this absolutely fabulous collection of cars and motorbikes and old hand-tools spread around. Its more of a museum that sells tools and stuff than the other way around. The main attraction however, is the full collection of bikes and tools and 'stuff' from Burt Munro's estate. Who? Burt Munro, creator, the star of the namesake of the film, The Fastest Indian (an Indian is a motorbike to those who may be struggling to follow), a tale about an ordinary sort of bloke that tricked an old 1920 Indian moto...