Well, last night I just finished the REI trip hiking/biking/kayaking through the South Island. We had a great group, everyone got along fabulously and our guides Paula & Damon were fantastic. I'll let you click on the itinerary on the prev page to see what we did, but I'd say my personal highlights were kayaking in Milford Sound and the hike in Mt Cook NP.
Lonely Planet calls Milford Sound the 8th Wonder of the World... not knowing all & off the top of my head, I can say that Milford Sound measures up to the likes of Yosemite Valley, the Grand Canyon, etc for its uniqueness and its awe-inspiring scenery. Just driving into the coastal valley above the Sound was spectacular in its own right. Think Yosemite in a rainforest with sheer rock faces blanketed by hundreds of long skinny waterfalls streaming along the sides. Then while kayaking out on the Sound we saw the 2nd highest mountain peak that pokes out of the sea (Mitre Peak), we saw seals, and even a wild penguin!
As for Mt Cook (or Aoraki if you prefer the Maori name, that hasn't seemed to catch on with locals like Denali has for Mt McKinley in Alaska), it is similar to Denali in that it frequently hides behind the clouds that gather around it's devil-horn shaped twin peaks. But my mountain karma was strong, and we had two days of clear views of the mountain from within about 30 miles of the peaks.
One of the other highlights of hte last two weeks that just popped to mind was the horseback ride that Jayme & Moira & I went on on our "free" day in Queenstown. Dart Stables in Glenorchy (about 30 min from Q-town) picked us up and the first question they asked was "did you pick us because of our Lord of the Rings connection?" The three of us looked at each other & shrugged "no", but we ended up on a two hour ride through some of the landscape where the 3rd movie was shot. Not only that, but when we arrived at the stables, we found out that we would ride with 3 of the actors! Much to Jayme & Moira's disappointment, Orlando Bloom & Viggo Mortenson weren't our companions for hte day, but it turned out that Dart Stables supplied about 7 horses that appeared in the Riders of Rohan scenes, 3 of which rode with us that day.
Thanks for reading!
hasta,
-PM