An epic Queenstown adventure

Wow. Thats all I can say. Wow. What a weekend we have just had. We had a tour to Queenstown that was so much more than we expected. It was fantastic.

We started out on Friday. We left Christchurch at lunch time with students from Aspiring school, Pacific school, Kaplan, CPIT, CCEL and New Zealand language centre. It was a very good mix of people, people from Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Taiwan and France.

Everyone was very excited as we left Christchurch and the excitment increase as we arrived at a snow covered Tekapo. Lake Tekapo looked very beautiful surrounded by snow, and we made many photos at the little stone church on the edge of the lake. It was a little cold, but the sun was shining brightly, perfect for making photos.

Soon after Tekapo we came to Lake Pukaki, and a lot of fog. We couldn't see much out the windows, the fog was so thick it was like driving in a cloud. The sun was setting and we were all getting a little hungry so we stopped in Omarama for a good hot meal. Mmmmm, much better.

The fog cleared just outside Omarama and we drove up through the Lindis pass. It was dark at night but we could see that the hills were covered in snow. It was cold, but the bus heater worked well keeping us all warm. Some of the Japanese girls were worried about the sheep out in the snow, but its OK, the sheep have thick wool to keep them warm.

We arrived in Queenstown at nine o'clock and went to our accomadation. We had a private block all to ourselves with nice warm rooms and a lounge with a TV and DVD player. It was really nice and we all felt like a family.

The next day we started off to visit Milford sound. The weather was clear and we took a lot of photos of scenery as we went. We had a nice lunch at Te Anau and took 100's of photos of the lake there. Beautiful. After lunch we drove to Milford sound. The road was very exciting, it twisted and turned all through the mountains and forest. Our guide Hamish has driven the road many times and we were able to sit back and enjoy it all.The best bit was when we went through a tunnel 1300 metres long. It went under the mountain! As we came down the other we could see Milford sound and Mitre peak.

We got on the boat for a two hour cruise around Milford Sound, it was awesome, we were the only ones on the boat and we had a lot of free tea and coffee. The cruise was fantastic for making photos, we must of taken tousands of photos. Everyone like the cruise, especially when we could see the seals playing in the water. Some of them even jumped out of the water for us. Very cool.

We were tired as we drove home. We stopped at Te Anau for dinner, some of us went to Subway and the others went to a cute Italian retraunt where they had really yummy pizza. The rest of the drove home most people slept, and some people listened as Hamish, Waleed and Susan played word games. Hamish won, but he has been speaking English for a very long time!

After two days on the bus we had a day to do exciting activities around Queenstown. It was cold and wet but five people went jet boating. They had a great time. The jet boat was very fast and they did lots of 360 degree turns. The photos looked very exciting.

Two girls went to the spa for a special beauty treatment. They looked wonderful when we saw them again later. We weren't so lucky with skydiving and hangliding, but two people went on the big swing. So scary but the photos looked wonderful. Jill and Yuko were very brave.

Lunch was a big surprise, it was Kunikos birthday, and Hamish brought her a birthday cake with candles. We all sung happy birthday and had chocolate cake. Everyone was very happy.

After this we all went on the bus to go and watch Jean-Marc go bungy jumping. We all watched some people jump off the bungy bridge, then Kuniko decided she would jump too. Very exciting!

Jean-Marc jumped first, and we all cheered him on as he jumped off the bridge. It was a great jump, very beautiful, like a swan. Kuniko was like stone when she jumped off. Very funny, we all laughed alot.

In the evening we all watched each others DVDs from the activities. The Jet boat DVD was very good, so was the Big swing. It was fun to see everyone having a good time.

On Monday we left Queenstown. First we visited Arrowtown, which was very cute. We had a nice hot coffee here and played with some snow. It wasnt snowing but we found some on a car that went past. We drove to Wanaka and visited puzzling world. We had funny making photos outside, and all laughed at the illusions in the illusion room.

After we left Wanaka we drove towards Christchurch. We got to the Lindis pass but the road was closed because of too much snow! There was a long line of cars waiting for the road to open again, but we turned around and drove towards the coast and back up to Christchurch. We drove through Ranfurly and there was alot of snow on the ground. We drove through two snow storms, then Hamish stopped the bus so the Saudi boys could build their first ever snow man. It was so cold outside. On the bus it was nice and warm and we all took turns to sing songs from our country. We also played a good travelling game called I Spy.
We reached a town on the coast called Palmerston then drove north. Just north of Oamaru there was some surface flooding and we drove through some water. It certainly was a dark and stormy night. We arrived back in Christchurch at 9.30, not too late.
It was very sad saying good bye to everyone. It was a fantastic trip and we all have a lot of new friends and memories we will never forget.

Thank you everyone!!