Our Time in India: New Zealand

Wanaka, Queenstown and Milford sound were our next stops in New Zealand. I hope you aren't growing tired of New Zealand but this is such an great way for me to document our trip. We had a fairly relaxing drive to Wanaka, not too long of a drive so we took some nice stops. One stop was at a beautiful waterfall that came crashing down into a river. We spent quite a but of time building rock towers. The kids took of their shoes and walked through the freezing water to get to the island. We enjoyed walking around Wanaka and going to Puzzling World we where explored an outdoor maze. We also toured Gibbston Valley winery and sampled some of their wines. We were able to see the wine cave where the wine turns into wine! We hiked to the top of Mt. Iron (elevation 549m) where we had beautiful view of the town, mountains and lakes. Stunning! Plus it was a good hike! The kids grew tired about 5 minutes from the top so we left them to build rock towers and went the rest of the way. The drive to Wanaka to Queenstown was great, we drove on the Crown Range Road which offered us spectacular views
We stayed in Queenstown for 3 days and the manager upgraded us to a three bedroom apartment. The kids were thrilled to be able to spread out. It was the nicest apartment yet! We enjoyed walking around the town. We rode the gondola up the mountain and then rode on the luge. The kids had a blast. We took a stroll by the harbor and the botanical gardens.
From Queenstown we left very early and made our way to Milford Sound to see the ever famous Mitres Peak. The drive was once again beautiful to Milford Sound. There were waterfalls, mirror lakes, grassy knolls and snow capped mountains. We drove through the Homer Tunnel which is at a fairly steep grade for 3/4 mile. It is one lane and there was a stop light to help the flow of traffic. Up to this point we had incredible weather but this day it was very overcast. I am thankful it didn't rain though! We then went to the dock to board our boat to do the Milford Sound tour. When checking in I asked if the boat was pretty full so they moved us to another boat with only about 2o other people versus 150 people! The boat also included a stop an an underwater conservatory where we could observe the marine life.

The Wine Cave