Deb and Reid's Holidays: West Coast

We spent the Christmas holidays with the family in New Zealand this year, and took a little time out to check out the sights! When you live somewhere it's easy to loose sight of the beauty around you so this trip was a perfect reminder of just how amazing New Zealand is!!

Lupins are everywhere along the roadside

Picnic lunch of Christmas leftovers at Lake Manapouri

We forgot cutlery ...

Lake Te Anau

Glass of wine, looking out over Lake Te Anau from our motel balcony

Horse riding in Hobbit territory

Driving along the road to Milford - we stopped for photos so many times we almost missed our boat

Milford Sound

Lots of sandflies at the Mirror Lakes so we only stopped for a very quick photo

Beautiful light at the golden hour

Lunch in Queenstown - the restaurant have hats for people sitting outside

The Arrow River - the water is SO COLD!

Ice cream in Arrowtown

View from the Crown Range

Lake Wanaka

Waterfalls at Franz Joseph Glacier

Franz Joseph Glacier

Reid ... he's in there somewhere

About to start our walk on the Fox Glacier

Fox Glacier

Spotted a Kea hunting for food

Finally an ice cream from Ettrick - I'd been looking forward to it for the whole trip!

Reid and I spent two weeks in NZ over xmas.
I spent the first week travelling down the West Coast of the South Island with Mum and Dad - which was absolutely spectacular - here's a quick summary:

Green as far as the eye can see - green hills, green fields, green rivers (in contrast to Australia which is brown/red as far as the eye can see). For New Zealand, 2006 was the year of rain, flooding, and landslides - this TVNZ news article summarises the year of bad weather in NZ over the past year.

weatherboard homes - esp in lime green