Hi All,

Still travelling and enjoying the time and the scenes of New Zealand. They take your breath away. New Zealand is like so many places rolled into one location, just like in the movies. With so many films like,The Hobbit, Everest etc being made here in New Zealand with its many landscapes you can understand why.

We arrived on the western coast of New Zealand and found the coastline magnificent. So many photo opportunities we all tried to get the best shots. Even our Founders Kevin and Kathy Young took to using the mobile devices for the best shots as well.

For those who know the 1993 movie the The Piano with Holly Hunter, Sam Neil and Harvey Keitel, you could just see the unloading of their belongings off the ship on the west coast with the waves breaking on the shore and the boxes being brought ashore, the waves washing against the large pebbles and the cold bleak weather that was to play out over the movie.

The following few days we played the tourist with opportunities to explore the rock formations around Fox Glazier and Mt Cook. We walked down through some native forest in the National Park and were just amazed at the giant trees that we were told were about 500 – 1,000 years old. Not even our girls team +1 could surround these gigantic trees.

When we left a hotel we were usually rugged up for the colder weather, but after some Kms of walking we had to take a break, enjoy the views and get some more energy. Still cold on the outside but always warm on the inside.

One day on our way to see the glow worms, the bus driver could not find any gears as we were going up the hill. Result was the bus stopped and had to reverse back down the one lane road.
We then had to walk back to the nearest living contact and call for another transport.
However what happens on tour stays on tour, but the result was we did get to see the glow worms and magnificent cave formations which have been there for many thousands of years.Some formations gave the opportunity for the framed photo experience.

Travelling on towards Queenstown we passed many a Lake in the Westland regions and just to show how much we missed home (ha ha,) we give you all a wave.
As the PMC members travelled on towards Queenstown we passed through Wanaka with its magnificent Lakes (did I say magnificent again??) and great reflections.

As we travelled across New Zealand we saw many of the sheep and deer farms that provide New Zealand with so much of its export dollars.These animals graze in highly improved pastures to get the super fine merino wool that New Zealand is well know for. A long standing farm product is the deer or venison that is now farmed. The deer were brought over from Australia as sporting game with early white settlement and now farmed with great success in the South Island. However it appears sheep numbers are dropping as farmers move from sheep to dairy farming, as middle class Asia finds a taste for dairy products. Fonterra, with over 10,000 New Zealand farmers in the company, is the largest exporter of dairy products in the world. Just one of the many facts we are learning about our ANZAC cousins across the ditch.

This has been a great tour and we are looking forward to more adventures before heading home.

Kind Regards

Wendy