After having been told by so many that the beauty of the South far surpasses the North, we jumped on a plane from Blenheim back to the North island…a 20 minute flight over the Sounds (seated 1A and 1B thank you, not keen to hang out with the riff raff back in rows 2 to 4) in what I had expected to the the most harrowing flight of the trip. In retrospect I wish I knew then what I know now and enjoyed it more. A healthy serve of potato gems in the lounge and we were back in the air, destination Queenstown!

En route, as we counted our dollars on the plane, it was a perfect day to see the South island (so good that James was too distracted and left his iPad on board meaning the world would be deprived of hearing about some duck’s holiday for a few more days), culminating in Mount Cook (tick) and Lake Wanaka (tick) before the spectacular approach into Queenstown. A town so named because it was once thought that only royalty would ever be able to afford to stay there. DINKS having not yet been invented. You’d expict the kiwis to be pretty good at fleecing, but this town takes it to a new livel! It made me glad I don’t have access to our credit card to be able to see the damage. Normally this kind of lux just ain’t for us, but we thought we’d live that fantasy.

Having said all that, we loved it and packed as much into our 2 days as possible. We took the gondola up the mountain not just for a glass of wine but, craving a different kind of buzz, we rode the luge!! The views from the course were so surreal, you could almost say they looked like an i-luge-ion…Afterwards, perhaps in reaction to me making that ‘joke’, Lea tripped down the stairs on the way out! For real, but the angry looks I get when we tell people she fell down the stairs when explaining an ever increasing number of bruises are palpable! At best I can only hope they think we were filming a Once Were Warriors sequel.

We had one of the most amazing experiences ever on the Shotover river in an incredible jet boat. With only 6 passengers in sometimes less than 2 inches of water the skipper (a mere child who was previously the bus driver) went nuts and damaged the boat in the process. It was ruduculously brulliant! Having a Fergburger just before, however, wasn’t the best idea. As the old agage goes: “never eat within 30 minutes of a dozen 360 spins in a jetboat over rock”. The night before we’d been on a slower paced cruise on the lake’s 105 year old steam boat. A real life working steam engine was open for viewing! Although this time the kid shovelling coal into the furnace didn’t seem so stoked to be doing his job…but so Watt. Afterwards we even had time to catch some of the ladies tennis, where we got to see shorts so tight they gave new meaning to the term “player’s box”.

The best quote of our time in Q-town was from Lea as we sat at a bar, gazing over the view: “I like it here, let’s get a bottle”. It sums up our trip/life, but I’ve included it as a reminder to self to get this printed on a T-shirt for her, and would have used it as a headline had I not included so many ‘Royals’ references.

From QT we set of for a long drive to Doubtful Sound (in a Corolla, but we don’t care, we were drivin’ Cadillacs in our dreams). With so many Sounds to choose from and only one night allocated, it was super difficult for us to choose which one to visit (given we can’t choose a restaurant if we have more than one choice), so Doubtful seemed the most apt selection. There’s not much I can say about the night on the water, the photos say plenty, but still not enough. I guess it can be summed up by them naming the ship’s bar after me, “JAS’s bar” (see pics for proof). We swam in the 26 degree water, kayaked and we even had 5 munutes of silence to listen to the water, trees and birds and get an understanding of why they call these bodies ‘Sounds’**.

**Fun fakt: the sounds in the Fiordland national park are not really sounds, but fiords, carved out by glaciers back in the ’80’s.

Following our time on Doubtful Sound we rented a small, stone guest cottage on a winery in the Gibbston valley, a picture pretty valley just outside of Queenstown. We went to the Gibbston wide renowned Tavern, sat on the grass outside our place watching the moon rise over the mountains and went cruisin’ down the highway in the hot, hot sun listening to “How Bizarre” and visiting the wineries. Wanna know the rest? Hey….buy the rights.

After an amazing moon rise on the first night in Gibbston, we were very excited about watching the eclipse on night 2. Unfortunately, however, we managed to find ourselves covered by our second ex cyclone in almost as many weeks. Unlucky as the whole valley is pretty much a desert. I guess it only rains once in a super, blood, blue moon….

Not only did the ex cyclone ruin our moon, but most of the next day also as we were due to fly through it from Queenstown to Auckland. And as they say at Air NZ: “Wi’ll whither the wuther whativer the wuther wither ewe like it or not…”. As we sat at the airport, flight after flight was cancelled leaving us wondering if we were scheduled on the only Super cyclone proof plane they had available? We weren’t. Just a normal aluminium tube hurtling through monsoonal clouds at right angles, dropping 100’s of feet at a time before seeing any clear air at cruising altitude 40 minutes later. 30 minutes of normal cyclonic induced turbulence, then repeat the take off experience while landing. On the bright side, James’ bowels were cleared pre-flight in expectation of what was to come, so no troubles on board…apart from squeezing Lea’s hand so hard she lost feeling in 2 fingers…no bruises though.