The next day we went to a coastal town called Haast. Nice place. The next day we drove to Queenstown, passing through a National Park on the way. Before we reached Queenstown though, the bus broke down in the middle of the mountains (near where they filmed the 'Warg' scene in 'The Two Towers'). Given the time it was gonna take to get mechanics to us & then fix the bus, we all opted to hitchhike the rest of the way. 

 

So, Queeenstown...this is your activity center of the South Island, and we spent a few days here. Here we did a Jetboat ride on a canyon river. The driver tears up this canyon, skimming the rocks, trying to scare everyone. It worked for the Asian woman who had to get off before we finished. She looked a bit ill. Tee Hee.

 

The next day we went horse-riding from Glenorchy, a small village amongst the mountains. this was where a lotta Lord Of The Rings scenes were filmed. This was good fun, great to horse-ride amongst the 'Misty Mountains' and cross through rivers, and so on.

That night, we went to a bar where everything was made of ice, called Minus 5 (have a guess why). Ahem... this was cool ;-) They had blue lights inside the ice statues, so the whole bar had a blue glow to it. The flash of the camera means you cant see it, but trust me, it was all a cool shade of blue ;-)

The next day we got a gondola ride up the mountain, and a few 'luge' rides down. They have a track going about halfway down the mountain, you sit on a skateboard thing with handlebars & tear down, then get a chairlift back up for your next go. This was class, we had a few 'Oh, sh*t' moments before we reached the bottom.

 

The next day, we left Queenstown & went to Milford Sound, a huge fiord with waterfalls. You get a boat cruise up the fiord. We stayed in a town called TeAnu, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains & the typical NZ scenery.

The next day, we got a ferry over to Stewart Island, the extreme south of NZ. We hired mountain bikes to get around and take pictures.

 

The next day we went to the Scottish town of Dunedin (stopping at a beach along the way to see the sea-lions). In true Scottish fashion, it p*ssed rain for the 3 days we were here, so we just chilled-out. Yesterday, we arrived back in Christchurch, and tomorrow we fly to Auckland to begin our North Island tour, also with Stray.