Our next leg of the trip involved working our way up the west coast of the south island, starting with the famous glaciers, Fox and Franz Joseph. We left Wanaka just after lunch. We got to Fox Glacier first, just before sunset, so we did a quick walk to get a view of the terminal face of the glacier. We would have liked to spend more time there, but with sundown imminent, we needed to find a place to stay. We found a holiday park in Fox not far from the glaci...

To get to Wanaka, we left Te Anau and had to drive for two hours back to Queenstown and then out another two hours. We accidentally turned onto the "scenic" road to Wanaka, which meant it would have taken an extra three hours over a mountain pass. Since we were driving at night, the scenic road would have been a waste anyway. We tested out my stick shift abilities with a three-point turn on a small gravel patch on the side of the mountain, and since I am now a st...

It was 5PM in Te Anau, and from our experience on the way out yesterday we know that the town absolutely shuts down at 9PM. So, we decided to take advantage of the final four hours of the Te Anau night. We saw a great movie in town called "Shadowland," which is a half hour of footage captured by a local helicopter pilot on flights throughout Fiordland. Captured from a very unique standpoint, the scenery was spectacular. The manager of the theatre came in to ...

We spent the last day in Queenstown walking around and enjoying the day. We grabbed lunch at a little sushi place on the pedestrian mall with great lunch deals. We took off pretty late for Milford Sound, which was about a four-hour drive from Queenstown. Halfway through the drive, we stopped off briefly in the town of Te Anau for dinner, but every place we went to for dinner was closing or closed. After all, it was 9PM. :) Things close down really early here. ...

Just outside of the Mount Cook area in a place called Twizel, we passed a salmon farm and decided to buy some fresh Mount Cook salmon (a must try in NZ). There was a sale on salmon, but it turns out it was only for the whole fish, not filets. So, we bought one. They pulled it right out of the water, gutted it, put it on ice, wrapped it in paper, and gave it to us. We put it on the floor in the bathroom in case it leaked fishy goodness. We figured we would deal wi...