I knew New Zealand was known for mountains and hiking. I didn’t realize that there were so many lakes there, but there are.We saw a few flying down to Queenstown that were pale blue and some while driving around that were deep cobalt. Such variety, but that I actually expect from New Zealand. In honor…
The kiwi is the national icon of New Zealand. It is on their 1$ coin. They use it on tons of marketing. The people even refer to themselves as kiwis. So I knew I had to see one if I could on our trip to New Zealand. So in planning I set out to find the sanctuaries in the towns we went through. We ended up finally seeing them in Rotorua at Rainbow Springs, and here is a bit about the experience.
Milford Sound is not a place that lends itself well to words. Although this is true for New Zealand as a whole, at Milford it is especially so. The vistas are hard to describe. The scale is too big to compare anything else in life to it. Pictures come closer, but still fail in ways. However words, pictures and humor are all I got to show you, so here goes.
Auckland, New Zealand is called the City of Sails. This is somewhat hard to believe when you walk down Queen Street and around the city. However on a harbor tour, this becomes much more apparent. On my last day in Auckland, we decided to take a harbor tour and saw more why the City of Sails makes sense.
I never expected to see a steam train in New Zealand. I knew they had the modern scenic trains, but I don’t think of the county as train heavy. However a lot of the land was settled and opened up in the age of steam, trains were definitely a part of the landscape. As a part of our bus ride to Milford Sound we stopped at Kingston, the other end of Lake Wakatipu from Queenstown King and Queen, huh?). There we saw the restored Kingston Flyer.
Fiordland National Park and Milford Sound were the highlight sight of my two weeks in New Zealand. There is only one road to Milford Sound and it goes through the Fiordland National Park. The drive through the three valleys and all the stops we did was my favorite part of the trip. Come take a look at this drive.