I hope all our readers have had a great weekend – we certainly have !! It started well after a wonderful Friday and Saturday on Milford Sound a majestic fiord in the southwest of the South Island. Not having seen the Norwegian Fiords I cannot compare but what we have seen was simply stupendous. The way the mountains seem to project out of the sea as sheer vertical cliffs was breathtaking. We were so lucky to have what was the sunniest day of the year so far in the Fiordland (where Milford Sound is situated). The camera, both stills and video, cannot capture the scene as seen by the eye but Sue has done her best so hopefully we can share our memories of the excursion to Milford Sound with you.

For those who want to know more immediately these ‘Sounds’ were formed by the glaciers which have subsequently melted. But formed in basin of very hard rock - the scars you see on the rock faces are those formed by the movements of boulders in the glaciers on the mountain sides. No other erosion has taken place - the rock which constitutes the side of the fiord is too hard to be eroded by wind or rain !! Apparently the real spectacular shows are when it rains as the water simply cascades off the sides of the fiords in great waterfalls into the Sound. Because we had the sunny day we had to make do with the crystal show of the sun glistening off the minerals in the rocks – shame !!

From Saturday evening to day Monday we have spent in Queenstown – a large city on the shore of one of New Zealand largest lake - Lake Wakatipu. Queenstown with its neighbour town of Arrowtown arose because of the gold rush of the mid-late eighteen hundreds when gold nuggets were found in the Shotover River which feeds into Lake Wakatipu. This river flow is the one which has produced the greatest amount of gold nuggets – alas it is ‘panned’ no more. Arrowrtown is just like a typical ‘Western’ town you see in American Westerns – but the only robbers in town are the souvenir traders. We took a ride today (Monday) on the Gondola up the side of one of the ‘mountains’ that overlooks Queenstown.

The views were stunning – again what the camera sees is a less than an adequate view of what the eye sees however I have replicated one of the shots to give you an idea Tomorrow we are off to Franz Josef Glazier – which is still one of the biggest in NZ. If the weather holds as it has today then we expect to be ‘blown away’ by the scenery. If it is windy and rainy we will just be blown away !! Will write more towards the end of the week