Queenstown - Te Anau

 We took a little detour on our trip to Te Anau and went through Kingston, Invercargill and then to the south tip of New Zealand to a little town of Bluff.  Outside of Bluff is where the Faveaux Strait and the Pacific Ocean meet.  This place is called Lands End and it is famous for the yellow sign pointing to different locations.

 This lighthouse is also located at Lands End.  It is shorter than most of the lighthouses we have seen.

This is a suspension bridge called Clifden Suspension Bridge.

December 28, 2011

Professional Picture of Shotover

Arrowtown - Shotover Ride

 We went to a small town outside of Queenstown called Arrowtown and it is a quaint little town.  We ate breakfast outside in this small little cafe.

 This is some of the little shops located on the main street of Arrowtown.

 They have an outside market twice a year and it happened to be happening on the day that we were there.  We were thankful that we have a limit on luggage to get home or else we would have bought a lot of items.  They had so many beautiful hand made items and they were reasonably priced.

The Shotover Ride was in a beautiful canyon with rocks hanging out and the boat would come as close as he could to the rocks.  It seemed like we were going to hit the rocks many times.  He would then have the jet boat go very fast in the 360 degree circle.  I thought it looked scary but it was very exciting and fun.

December 27, 2011

Mt. Cook - Queenstown

 In Queenstown they have a gondola which takes you high above the city and you can get a panoramic view.  It is a spectacular view.

 This is view of Queenstown from the gondola.  It has mountains all around and different lakes in the middle of the town.

 On the top of the mountain there are a lot of different activities.  They have tandem hang gliding.  We saw a couple of people coming up the ski lift to continue on to go hang gliding.  It looks pretty exciting but also very scary.

 This sign lets you know how many kilometers you are from different locations.  We were only 11492km from Los Angeles.

 This is the Skyline Restaurant where we ate dinner.  It is located on the very top of the hill overlooking Queenstown.

Fergburger is the happening place in Queenstown.  There is always a long line of people waiting to eat there.

Also on our way to Queenstown we became familiar with two other delicious food items.  The first one was in a town called Twizel.  We stopped at the Shawty's Cafe for breakfast.  We ordered hot chocolate and it was hot chocolate with melted marshmallows on top sprinkled with coco and two colored marshmallows on the side.  It was so good that we had to compare hot chocolates every day to see who had the best.  In Cromwell they have fresh fruit and they have a machine that mixes ice cream with the fresh fruit.  It also is addictive.

Sir Edmund Hillary

 Don has just finished reading an autobiography of Sir Edmund Hillary and at the hotel there is a museum the depicts his adventures before he climbed Mt. Everest.  This is a tractor that he used when he explored the South Pole.

This tractor helped carry the supplies they needed for the hike.

This is a statue of him outside of the hotel.  He is remember here because Mt. Cook was a training mountain to prepare him for the climb up Mt. Everest.

December 26, 2011

Mt. Cook

 This is looking at Mt. Cook from a distance.  We stopped along the road on the way into the town.

 Mt. Cook with the sun shining on the top and the clouds down below.  Many times you can't see the top of the mountain because of the low hanging clouds.

 This is Mt. Cook first thing in the morning. Below is the Hermitage Hotel where we stayed for the night.

 The Alpine Memorial is in memory of all the hikers who have lost their lives while trying to climb Mt. Cook.

 This is a monument which is covered on three sides with names and dates of those who has died.

December 26, 2011

South Island Christmas Trip

The archives was closed for 10 days for the Christmas Holiday so we asked our mission president what we should do and he suggested that we see some of New Zealand.  So we decided to take a trip to the south island along with the McVey's.

We flew into Christchurch from Wellington and traveled towards Mt. Cook.  This is a beautiful azure lake that we saw along the way.  It is called the Rakaia Gorge Walkway.  It had very blue water and children were swimming in the lake.

 These flowers were all along the road.  They were very abundant outside of Fairlie.  They are called lupins.  They were alongside the road and then completely covered the hillsides.

We stopped at the Church of the Good Shephard.  It is a very old church which is still being used today but we were not allowed into the church but the one side had windows so we could see the inside of the church.

We also stopped for lunch along the way at a little shop called the Udder Dairy Gift Store.  We had the basic New Zealand lunch which was sausage rolls and chips.