Ok- found another tiny window to hopefully finish up the New Zealand portion of the blog- I'll pick up right where I left off-
We woke up Thursday morning in TeAnau. I went on a glorious run by myself around the lake. I didn't take my camera but it was amazing- mirror lake. We had a slow morning and eventually took kids to a super cool playground in town. It had a zip line for the kids. We don't get a lot of playgrounds in Fiji. The few that are there are very old and just the basic slide and swings. Our kids have LOVED the different playgrounds on this trip.
After a few hours of play, we started the trek towards Milford Sound. It's about a two hour drive if I remember correctly, but you can stop along the way for many different little adventures. We stopped to look at a mirror stream, to hike to a gorge, and stopped before the one way tunnel. Again, it was all completely and utterly STUNNING. It may be the prettiest drive we did, but that's hard to say because it was all beautiful. Right before the one way tunnel there was a patch of snow. The kids were ecstatic to play in the snow. They are so ignorant about the snow it's funny! Zoë was walking on it with her flip flops and kept slipping so she took off her shoes. She truly thought it would be fine to be barefoot in the snow! That lasted about thirty seconds and then obviously changed her mind about that! Anyway, the snow was a huge highlight for the girls!
We finally drove through the one way tunnel and arrived in Milford. We enjoyed a beer and dinner and then walked down to the sound for sunset. Wow! It's pretty phenomenal. I mean, I've never seen anything like it. It was WELL WORTH the drive there. We had such a good night.
Love catching these moments.
Zip line at playground
meat pie- had to do it in nz!
Mirror stream
Zoe thought she was being funny putting her booty in my face.....
dinner
We woke up early so we could take our boat tour of the fjord. It was awesome! We saw massive waterfalls, penguins, seals, and dolphins! It was great. Then we drove to Queenstown (about 4 hours). We found a beautiful lake to freedom camp at and decided to just stay there instead of go into the city. We had a perfect last night in our RV. We finished all of our food and took beautiful walk around the lake. The girls found a swing and all were happy.
Avoiding getting wet in waterfall
Queenstown campground
Finishing the last bits of food
Last night of playing games
Final sunset
The next morning we woke up early to get to the RV drop off place in time and to catch our flight to Auckland. I was super sad to say goodbye to the RV and all of the super quality family time. The trip exceeded all of my expectations!
We flew into Auckland and took a cab to our hotel. We enjoyed some down time laying around on sofas watching tv before we explored the city. We ate way too much food at a food park and then went home for a little while again before going out to explore one more time. We ate a mediocre dinner on the waterfront and got some yummy ice cream. That night Zoë woke me up in the middle of the night and she had vomited EVERYWHERE! Great. Just what you want - a vomiting child before getting on a 17 hour flight (three different planes). It was a mess!
Luckily, it was one and done! Thank goodness she was ok. The next morning we ate a lovely French breakfast and walked around town before heading to the airport.
What an amazing trip. It was perfect before we got here - crazy socializing and everyone going different directions. I'm so thankful for our family of adventurers!
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