South Island Pictures

Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

This was our first trip to the South Island. The journey started with me incorrectly booking the ferry for the wrong direction!!!, but we got that sorted out on the morning of departure. We headed to Blenheim then across to Nelson, then intention being to get across to Takaka in Golden Bay. Although the distance is not far, the roads are windy and at times (especially the Takaka Hill) very hilly. The reason for going across there was to see Waikoropupu Springs, the world's clearest waters. One thing that really did impress Xiaohua whilst driving through the upper South Island was the beautiful autumn colours every where , splashes of reds, gold's, yellow's and rich brown's among all the native green.

From there it was back to Motueka, where we stayed our first night. The next day was a leisurely drive across to Westport, then down the West Coast, stopping at Punakaiki to see Pancake Rocks. That afternoon (day 2) we ended up in Franz Josef for the night and saw our first glimpses of snow on the peaks. The next morning we were greeted with a white covering across all of the surrounding mountains. The next morning we ventured to the glacier, but because of the overnight snow and rain we were not allowed to the glacier face, so we headed over to Fox Glacier where we did get right up to the face. After that we headed east through the Lewis Pass to Hanmer Springs, when we arrived there it was snowing quite hard as the pictures show. The next morning Hanmer was had a blanket of snow across it. Continuing north east we stopped off at Mount Lyford to play in the snow then onto Kaikoura then back to where we started off - Picton. Once there we went a few kilometers on around the bays to visit a very old friend who had just finished building a house in a secluded bay to spend a night with him and his partner.

The next day - back home

You can view the map of the South Island with the route we took by clicking on the link below