Milford Sound here we come

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Well its just before 9pm and I'm pleased to say both kids are fast asleep!  A cause for celebration - these moments are rare.  Steve has just got us a tea, so I'm going to enjoy it before I continue my blog.  Hope you don't mind. :)

Well I'm now writing this blog at 6.25am on the 15th March. Last night we ended up having a big conversation about the future of our business. Was interesting, and have made some decisions...  Being away definitely gives me time to reflect and work out the stuff that is important to me, and the stuff that isnt so important.

So anyway...Well Steve didnt do his skydive as the weather was atrocious.  I think he was upset to miss it, which I find surprising, especially as I was having nightmares about it the night before (and I wasn’t even the one jumping!).  We decided to try to get the jump for him when we return to the North Island, as the weather showed no sign of clearing, and to be honest I was wanting to move on.

My summary of Queenstown – well it’s a lovely scenic place, but the essence of New Zealand has been lost to tourism.  There are too many foreign people both travelling through and working there to keep the character intact.  We found people on the whole to be fairly rude, arrogant and non-helpful, not at all like the rest of people we have encountered around the country.  I think people in Queenstown know that they are going to get tourists and as a result don’t have to work for it, so they don’t!

Saying all this, I would still want to return to Queenstown, as there is an amazing set of activities on offer, it really is an adult’s playground.  Wanaka is fast getting the activities that Queenstown has, so will be interesting to see if this affects Wanaka, which is a place I far preferred, and more like NZ.

We travel down to Te Anau.  It’s a hard call for us whether to go as the previous night we were freezing.  The temperature is around 11 degrees in the daytime, a complete contrast to a couple of days ago.  And it’s snowing on the mountain/hills above, we can visibly see it.  I worry about taking the kids into further cold weather, and wonder if we should try to get over the east of the country, where we know it will be warmer.  But looking at the weather forecast it seems that the whole country is wet, windy and cold (maybe not quite as cold as us though!).  And the forecast says the weather will get better by Friday.  So we decide to push on to Te Anau (which leads to Milford Sound), but dress warmer for bed, and make sure the kids have more clothes on during the day/night.  Lloyd is okay, he keeps snug with me, but Matthew has a habit of kicking off the duvet.  We decide to put Matthew in his fleece pyjama suit, which so far this holiday we haven’t used.

The rest of the day is fairly uneventful. The kids sleep most of the way to Te Anau, just having a stop nearby for a feed for Lloyd. Matthew is becoming a dab hand at helping his dad with the motorhome electrics and water, and Lloyd seems, once again, in a jovial mood.  Lloyd even sleeps through dinner that afternoon, making it a lot easier for me to cook something.  Matthew enjoys the park visit, which I don’t enjoy so much as it was blowing a gale and freezing cold in Te Anau.  It seems hard to believe just a week ago we were in the warmth of Abel Tasman.  We see the news that evening on the tv whilst cooking dinner at the campsite and see that there have been storms and cold weather all over the country, even a tornado!