The Deep South

There’s been something rather special about telling people that I’ll have travelled from the top of the North Island to the South of the South Island during my time in New Zealand, but now unfortunately it is time for the romance to fade. Whilst we made it incredibly far south (all the way to Bluff) we didn’t make it to either of the southern signposts I was hoping to get a picture of due to a bus driver with alternative plans and a road closure…

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Milford Sound

Milford Sound is regularly described as an eighth wonder of the world and has an international reputation for its beauty so I was particularly excited about coming to see it. It is 16km in length and has an average depth of 330m. It is the northernmost of 14 fiords which make up the coastline of Fiordland National Park. We had been told how rare it was to get a clear day to see the area so were surprised to have cloudless blue skies for the entire journey.

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Wanaka

Wanaka is a wonderful place and somewhere I wish we’d been able to stay for longer. In the past I think it’s been over shadowed by nearby Queenstown but more people seem to be discovering Wanaka’s charms so I’d recommend going before it becomes too overcrowded.

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Franz Josef

The one thing I desperately wanted to do before we even left the UK was to do a helihike on the Franz Josef glacier. For that reason we stayed in Franz Josef longer than we otherwise might have done to try and ensure that we got good weather for it. However, this meant that we also had time to do some walks, including our favourite hike to date.

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The Wild West Coast

I’m not a surfer and had heard about the notoriously bad weather on the west coast of the South Island so we hadn’t planned to spend much time here, but what we did see was great and it certainly makes for a spectacular driving route.

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