South Island Trip - Take Two

Once we got our campervans, we were good to go! We named our RV Molly Malone, and she was our home on wheels for the next 10 days. Admiral Slettebø was our driver, and just behind us were the Danes, their driver, Capitain Pops.

The first stop on our Tour de South Island was at Lake Tekapo on the way to Maunga Aoraki, (Mount Cook). This is the whole gang! Simon, Kristian (Admiral Slettebø), Niels (Capitain Pops), Ulrik, Betty, Me, Jenn, and Marte.

We took a short walk to the Mount cook lookout. Good weather was definitely on our side =)

Just a 20 minute drive from the lookout was Hooker Valley (no joke), where we hiked up a bit of a hill to check out the Hooker Glacier. This was the view on the way up, and below is me chilling out at the top. Thanks Jenn for the great panamarama*

Driving down the East side of the South Island, we passed by a lot of lakes and rivers, and I was so tempted to jump in, but we were on a tight schedule to get to Queenstown by Friday.


Here's one of the rivers we passed that had a pedestrian bridge to a quaint little tourist attraction. There was a giant slide that I wanted to go down so badly, but we had to get back on the road.

Queenstown was great, but more on that later...

On our way out of Queenstown, we drove about 5 hours out of the way to get to the Milford Sound. We took a boat cruise around the sounds, and got to see even more beautiful scenery. It was well worth the detour, and one of the highlights of our trip.

We even got to see little seals cruising on the rocks. Sooo cute!

The next day we started our drive back north, this time going on the West side of the South Island. We didn't have time to go on the glacier, but we took a short walk to the Franz Joseph lookout. Again, very beautiful and a nice break from all the driving.

Our last stop on the South Island was the Abel Tasman National Park. Like most of our trip, this was an almost spur of the moment decision, and turned out to be another one of the highlights.

We took a water taxi to a small bay and hiked a short trail to another bay called Anchorage where the water taxi picked us up after two hours. Just 

enough time for me to take a quick dip in the ocean! My first time in New Zealand waters, and it was FREEZING! The water was so cold I felt like I was burning, but it was totally worth it.

The best part of the water taxi was that it was towed in and out of the water via tractor! Hahaha.

We spent our last night on the South Island near Picton where we returned Molly Malone, and took the ferry back to Wellington. In Wellington, we rented cars for $1 plus the cost of insurance and drove back to Hamilton. This was the sunset on the way home, definitely a beautiful way to end the trip.