christchurch - queenstown

hello people,

happy easter! how u going? we're good... u must be thinking what the heck? again an update? don't they have better things to do?? well the answer is no...

we arrived in queenstown (south west of the south island) yesterday. and queenstown means lord of the bloody rings. it appears, that most of the locations are filmed here so jeroen (the biggest of the biggest LOTR fans in the world ;-)) has to do a tour of course. at the moment he is on the rings tour, and he has left me, all aloney, on my owney, here in queenstown... :-( so what is the best therapy if a girl is alone?? yep, RETAIL THERAPY!! yes, yes, and trice yes! shopping! yep, that felt good. i'm feeling so much better now... well remember we told you that it is cold here?? well it is cold. the days are okay (today is quite nice actually, sunny and quite warm as well) but the mornings, evenings and nights are sooooo damn cold. i'm literally freezing my ass off when i go to the toilet in the middle of the night... so i desperately needed some winter clothes... and today was a perfect day for some shopping. hehe, i bought quite a lot but hey i needed them :-p, two woolen jumpers, a pair of trousers, a scarf and gloves and a new jacket! that'll keep me warm when we go walking (or tramping as they call it here) in the mountains. yep i'm ready for the cold!

what did we do after we left christchurch? we went to banks peninsula, to the town of akaroa, a peninsula 80 kms east from christchurch, formed by two giant volcanic eruptions millions of years ago, where we went on the harbour nature cruise. on the trip we saw beautiful volcanic cliffs, caves and dolphins again! we saw the hector's dolphins, the world's smallest and rarest dolphin, only found in NZ. dolphins are so adorable and cute. we considered swimming with them but it was so damn cold and so is the water so it was better to skip it this time. perhaps later on the north island, if weather permits. and i wasn't seasick again. i bought some acupuncturishy sea bands, wristbands that prevent motion sickness. well not sure if they work but i was not sick on the cruise... although the sea wasn't very rough either and the vessel was quite stable. anyway, i wasn't sick and that's all that matters.

on good friday we drove towards mount cook, the highest mountain (3700 m +) in australasia. we passed some very beautiful and blue lakes, lake tekapo, lake pukapi. at lake pukapi we had a nice clear view on mount cook. wow the mountain is impressive! the tops are covered with snow. since it was a bit late we decided to stay in omarama (80 km south from mt cook) for the night. the next morning it was raining, foggy, windy and cold. according to the weather forecast it should clear up in the afternoon. and since we don't really trust the weather forecast, the question was to go or not to go? after a long and thorough analysis and going up the road, back, and up the road again we eventually reached a decision. we decided not to go to mt cook and to head to queenstown instead and then come back later for mount cook. so now we're in queenstown. not sure what we are going to do next, probably heading to the west, to milford sound and fiordland. we might also spend more time here around queenstown. we still have to decide on that but we keep you posted!

some pics we owed you... enjoy! we sure did :-)

some people are celebrating their birthday this week, congratulations to alex, steph, rene, mummy (katja) and last but not least my dearest jeroen. everyone, have a nice day!

Some words from Jeroen, who just walked in:
I've insisted on Georgia to come with me on the LOTR Tour, but, since our last guided LOTR Tour in Hobbiton, where she didn't know what the heck the guide was talking about and because she did set her mind on some retail therapy (what's this thing with women and shopping????), she decided that she really didn't want to go.
The tour was excellent and the weather was really nice today, so she missed out on some beautiful sites. I made enough pictures however to show her :-)