Mountains of Fun

From Invercargill, where the lamb bottle-feeding took place, we began to head north up the west coast. We are now in the Southern Alps, which means more breaktaking snow-capped mountains and glacier-fed blue lakes than you can shake a stick at.

Just outside of a tiny town called Clifden we ventured into a network of underground limestone caves, with our hikers, a torch (aka flashlight), and fairly low expectations of how good free caves could be. Well, were we surprised! The caves took over half an hour to navigate, and involved tight squeezes, spider walking across underground streams, and even glowworms. At the end we discovered a tiny lamb that had wandered into the caves, so we carried it out and it became attached to us. Andrea wanted to keep it, but Craig convinced her that the van would probably not be the ideal location to raise a lamb.

Next we spent three days relaxing in Te Anau where our campsite had wonderful views of Lake Te Anau, which is New Zealand’s second-largest lake and is part of Fiordland National Park. Unfortunately the weather was rainy and we were both sick, but it was the perfect place to recharge our batteries. Apparently you still get sick while on a year-long vacation.

From there we headed to Queenstown, New Zealand’s adventure capital. The town itself reminded us a bit of Whistler, and we only stayed one night, since everything was very touristy and overpriced. If we end up wanting to do a bungee jump or anything else EXTREME we will do it when Craig’s parents are here in a few months. That night we went out with a fun Scottish couple who were camped next to us and we watched the All Blacks (NZ’s rugby team) lose to South Africa. The night ended in a tiny Whisky Bar where we traded travel stories in front of a fire and played hacky sack with the British bartender who was so impressed with Craig’s “stellar ‘chops” that he bought Craig a beer.

Now we are in Wanaka, once again at a lakeside campsite and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Yesterday we did a five and a half hour hike to the top of Roy’s Peak, which at 1578m is the highest tramp we’ve done here. Although it completely kicked our butts, we were rewarded with panoramic mountain range views at the top. You just don’t have these views in Southern Ontario!

Today we went to Puzzling World, where we went into the Illusion Rooms and were amazed by holograms and puzzled by rooms that were at an angle or played with our sense of perception. We also navigated our way through a giant 3-D, two-story, kilometre and a half maze that took close to an hour. It was a-MAZE-ing!