NEW ZEALAND
January 21–February 20, 2004
The Big Picture
In case anyone asks, it took us about 17 hours of
flight time to get from Denver to Auckland: Denver
to Los Angeles (2.5 hours) to Papeete, Tahiti (8.5 hours) to Auckland (6 hours). This did not include
waiting in airports between flights. From Auckland we flew immediately to
Christchurch (add another 1.5 hours)
and the next day we rode a public bus that took eight hours to get us to
Queenstown, our final destination.
Along the way to Queenstown, we made our first stop at Lake Tekapo, the site
of the Church of the Good Shepherd.
We met with Alan and Cheryl, our trekking
companions, the following day. Together we went by bus to Te Anau and then by boat to the beginning
of the Milford Track. Four days later
we took a bus back from Milford Sound
to Queenstown where we said good-bye
to Alan and Cheryl, rented a car and toured the south island for 10 days,
staying nights in Wanaka, Franz Joseph Glacier,
Punakaiki, Hanmer Springs, Kaikoura, Picton, and
Motueka, where we joined Alan and Cheryl again for our trek
on the Abel Tasman Coastal Track. We
spent three days on the Able Tasman, backpacking two days and kayaking the
third before returning to the start of the Track by water taxi. The two
of us spent one night in Havelock before
returning the car to Picton and boarded
the ferry to the north island.
In Wellington we
rented a campervan for a ten-day driving tour of the north island where
we visited Napier-Hastings, Taupo-Tangoriro,
and the coast of New Zealand's Northland region including the Bay of Islands. On February 20 we returned
the campervan in Auckland and boarded
the plane for the return trip the way we came, arriving home more than
17 hours later on the same day ("gaining back" the day we "lost" on the flight
to New Zealand).
