Hi all, as you can probably tell from the photos we've been busy and cold, and Ror has been a bit snap happy!
Since last time we wrote we headed off to Te Anau for some sea kayaking at Milford sound. We stayed at another long drop campsite but the view of the sunset over lake Te Anau more than made up for the lack of flush. We set off on our kayaking trip after a 5.45am alarm in the pitch black, watched an amazing sunrise as we headed to Milford, but also watched the weather gradually deteriorate until we were told it was too bad for kayaking. We were massively disappointed but the weather was awful and we got booked onto a cruise instead and the views were stunning. We topped off the day with a free film and a trip to the pub to watch the rugby. The pub minibus that boasted a free door to door service was greatly appreciated!
We headed back to queenstown- more sunshine, ice cream and free wifi, then on to lake tekapo. We had planned to go on to a long drop campsite at mount cook but we had rubbish weather again so spent a few rainy days relaxing at lake tekapo, planning our next moves and generally doing not alot.
Next stop was wanaka for a spot of lunch (beautiful place and a gorgeous sunny day) then on to makarora (aka 'makarory'), a tiny place with a population of just 40. We stayed in a pretty deserted campsite, the showers were good but the kitchen smelt a bit of wee. Went for a run in the sunshine (bloomin hard work on my part, a breeze for Ror!). Met a really nice couple from Tasmania, we swapped tips on Milford sound and fox and franz josef glaciers over dinner.
A pretty white knuckle drive got us to franz josef and a really cool campsite- 'rainforest retreat'. We stayed there for 3 nights and I didn't want to leave. We spent a day walking and trekking to franz josef and fox glaciers, then rewarded ourselves with a beer in the hot tub back at the campsite and dinner at the restaurant. We set off on another trek the next day, working our way through rainforest for an awesome view of franz josef. Another hot tub and then disappointment in the pub as Ror's hopes of England winning the world cup were smashed.
Tired and achey, we left franz josef the next day for greymouth. I wanted to stop off in a town we spotted on the map that has a population of 2, and Ror was quite interested in the 'road kill cafe' that's there (motto 'you kill it we grill it'), but we managed to drive through it without even noticing! Stayed in a very strange hostel in greymouth, but it was cheap and had free bakery food and unlimited free Internet so can't complain too much!
Next we went to marahau, to explore Abel Tasman. We took a water taxi (quite an experience) up the coast and walked through the national park, saw lots of fur seals, some beautiful deserted beaches with golden sand and managed to bump into a uni friend of Rors on one of the beaches! There was a moment of panic when we thought we might have missed our water taxi home, then a very cold paddle in the sea when it finally arrived.
We arrived in Blenheim yesterday and are currently enjoying the warm sunshine before our winery tour tomorrow - we've hired a tandem, I can't wait!

Ror's bits:

Milford sound: having got over the massive disappointment that it was too windy to kayak we thoroughly enjoyed the cruise that took us right the way out to the mouth of the Tasman. Upon turning round at this point to look upon the somewhat hidden entrance of Milford sound (actually a fjord but I think all the maps and marketing posters had been printed by the time they realised this) it became clear why the Maoris called this place the shadow land (one of the photos show the misty grey look that we saw). Thanks to the ever present rain the number of waterfalls that cascaded down the side of the sound was an incredible sight to witness. Couple that with an extremely strong wind and you get the phenomenon known as water ups, where the water is literally blown back up the cliff. It truly is an awesome place to be and I'm glad that we went on the cruise as you get to see more of the sound than the kayakers.

Lake tekapo: thanks to the presence of rock flour (caused by the erosion of rocks by glaciers) this lake has an eery milky look to it. I am told, and by the look of some photos of it I have seen, that it looks even more impressive when it is reflecting the blue of the sky on a sunny day. However, as has now become the norm on the majority of our trip, it was overcast and rainy, so although it looked good, it could have been better. We also stopped off on our drive up there to look at mount cook. Or at least where mount cook was. I took a photo of the clouds in front of it anyway.

Glacier Country: Two words. Awesome. On our first walk to both the terminal faces it was a wet and windy day. Having experienced so many days like this we hardly even noticed it and walked quite happily the hours walk to both of the glaciers in turn. Along with those in South America, these are the the some of the few remaining advancing glaciers in the world and the Department of Conservation are doing their best to ensure that the environment that allows them to do so remains this way. As such, our walk could only take us to 150m away from franz josef and 200m away from fox. To get any closer we would have to pay quite a considerable amount to one of the approved guiding companies. As we are hoping to do this in south America we settled for a still impressive view from the public tracks. Our trek up to a point called Rata lookout which looks down onto the top of franz josef was recommended to us by the Tasmanian couple in makarora and I'm very glad they did so. Although they said to us it was a 3hour return fairly rocky trek up to this point I believe that they were in fact particularly spritely mountain goats as it took us comfortably over 4 hours from leaving our van. The view at this point was incredible. The photos I took really don't do it any justice at all. To look down on to the top and see how the glacier had formed and shaped the surrounding area was an impressive sight to behold. Even if I had sweat half my body wieght out.

England's disappointing quarter final: I'm not too proud to say that we just weren't good enough and, as they always seem to do in a quarter final, the French suddenly found form and outplayed us all over the park. Disappointing though it was I'm now hoping for a Welsh victory over the all blacks in the final. Fortunately the quins still have it well and truly in the bag.

Abel Tasman: I genuinely thought that when we woke up on our first morning there that our van would be bogged down and imoveable from the field that we were parked in after we had experienced over 16hours of heavy rain! Fortunately we managed to make our way very slowy out and to our water taxi. And as an added bonus the sun came out too! Abel Tasman national park is a beautiful place. The DOC are tirelessly working to restore it to it's predator free state that it was before the european settlers introduced stoats, rats and possums to it. They have actually managed to achieve this on one of the islands there and hope that this can spread further. Thanks to this work the bird song throughout our walk was an incredible sound track to walk to. As we turned into Bark Bay to stop on the beach there and have some lunch I saw the very recognisable behind of Wellsey! We knew he was in and around Abel at the time but due to lack of phone reception and Internet and the numerous amount of campsites we figured we werent going to be able to meet up. So it was a pleasant surprise to eat our packed lunch on the beach with the big fella!
Good times.