We added a day to our trip as we changed flights on the way home. We flew from Queenstown to Auckland and stayed one night in Auckland. We arrived in the rain and I took this picture outside of our hotel balcony.  While the picture doesn’t reflect Auckland, the scene did remind me of those scary movies where all the bad things happen on a rainy night on the dock.

The end of another beautiful day…

Even within the canyon, the landscape changes dramatically.

Little did I know when I signed us up for a Canyon ride that it would be quite the adventure.  It is a one lane “road” that you can see in the picture which accommodates two-way traffic (still not sure how we managed this).  The “road” was either icy or incredibly muddy.  Luckily we weren’t driving and we were in a four-wheel drive SUV.  

The path through the canyon was largely built by Chinese and the canyon experienced its greatest growth during the gold rush during the 1800s.   There are still a few people living in the canyon – surprisingly some are related to each other and don’t speak to one another.  You’d think that given the isolation of the area, you wouldn’t want to lose a friend.

While we didn’t love the boat ride, the airplane ride was spectacular.  This is an aerial view as we were leaving the Sound.

Touring the Sound from our boat.  While beautiful, I enjoyed Alaska’s inlets a bit more.  Not sure if the first time is just more memorable.  This is another tour that is hyped a lot in the tour guides.  I enjoyed it, but found other elements of our trip more inspiring.

We did get a kick out of the Asian tour group that was on our boat with us.  As we approached a waterfall, they all came rushing up to the front of the boat (led by their tour guide) singing their team chant.  We never did figure out what that was all about…but they certainly had a lot of team spirit and weren’t troubled at all about pushing people aside.

A beautiful landscape with the water and mountains as we approached Milford Sound.

From Wanaka we drove to Queenstown, known as the adventure capital of the world.  It seems there are many ways you can kill yourself here doing extreme sports, including bungy jumping which was supposedly invented here.  Instead of extreme sports, we flew over Milford Sound and took a boat ride around the area; did a bit more wine tasting of their famous pinot noir and took a death-defying canyon drive in Skipper’s Canyon.

This picture is an aerial view of the Queenstown area – we were en route to Milford Sound.

Breathtaking lake and mountain views…

Wanaka is a resort town surrounded by a huge lake and mountains.  It’s a great getaway destination just 75 miles outside of the more popular Queenstown.  People like Wanaka as it is much less touristy than its neighbor Queenstown.