New Zealand New Year

It’s a new year but it doesn’t feel like it. With the absence of family, holidays, and cold weather it still feels like late July. We’ve been spending our extended summer exploring the west coast of New Zealand’s south island. We have taken in some truly amazing scenery in the past few weeks, and should have some new pics on Flickr shortly. We have already spent 4 nights staying in a temperate Rainforest. We stopped in a small town and learned how to forge our own knives. The past few days we’ve been in Queenstown ,which is a popular winter ski destination but still pretty nice in the summer time. We would almost think we were in Colorado if it weren’t for all the fish and chips.
Today we are leaving, but we’ve mapped out several campsites to stay in over the next few days. This week we hope to hike to a natural hot spring, Kayak in a Lagoon, and swim in beaches boarded by temperate rain forest. Amazing!