First Week of Holiday

Tonya and I have almost completed our first week of holiday, and it seems like the time has flown by. We have gotten to do and see so much this week. We started off by going to Queenstown, once again, to try our hand at canyoning. It was a blast! The trip lasted about 2 hours and included a little rappelling, 2 ziplines, a few slides, and some exciting jumps. I'm not a very great swimmer though and this showed a little compared to Tonya who was on her high school's swim team. I was also a little more scared of the jumps than her, which you can see in some of the videos they took. I tend to do a little half jump or stutter step off the ledge, whereas most people just jump right off. My fear of heights got the best of me I guess

The next day we drove to Milford Sound. The drive there was very scenic with a lot more trees and green grass. We were told at the beginning of our trip that if you don't like the scenery in the area in NZ, you just need to drive 50K in one direction and everything will be different. This trip has definitely proven that. We did an overnight cruise of the Sound, which turned out to be very neat. They took us out through the sound and then back to a little cove where they let us choose from three options: kayaking, going out on the tendercraft, or swimming. Tonya and I both chose to do kayaking, which was a lot of fun. We learned quickly that we aren't very good at it though. Many people took off really fast and we kinda just let the current take us nice and slow. They served us some supper and then had some board games and cards to play for the night. We ended up playing Scattegories with two guys from Germany and a girl from England. After our game Tonya and I decided to go back outside to check out the stars for a little while. It was really cold, but the stars were beautiful. They were so bright and there were so many of them. The cabins we stayed in were tiny, but actually pretty comfortable and I slept really well. The next morning they served us breakfast and then took us around the sound again, but this time they got really close to the different waterfalls to the point that the water was hitting the deck and we all got sprayed by the mist. We also went out to the opening of the sound and saw the Tasman Sea and the coastline.

We then spent a day in Te Anau, which is the only town near Milford Sound. We decided that as our Easter present to ourselves we would stay in a hotel for the night, rather than the cheap hostels and backpackers. It was nice to have a room and bathroom to ourselves and we ended up sleeping in pretty late too which was great.