For Christmas and New Years I had my Dad and Sister visiting me. We had heaps of fun and saw alot of New Zealand. I will here try to summarize the Holiday.

Arrival: They arrived on a Tuesday at Wellington airport 2 h late after a 34 hours flight stopping in London, Hongkong and Sydney. The airline manage to loose their luggage in London so they where empty handed as they arrived in Welly. The first day, after a long nights sleep they walked into town and had a look around as I was working. The following days was spent shopping in Wellington and visiting my work place. On Friday the 22nd I started my Holiday and we borrowed my workmates lowered Honda Civic and drove up to Taupo, where I had booked a Hotel for us.

Taupo: I had booked a “Spa Hotel” by recommendations from a friend in Taupo town, so as when I got free from work we drove the 6h north to the great lake.  The place we stayed at was very nice with its own spa pool and heaps of space. The only down side was the kitchen, with a microwave, water boiler and an electric heater we still manage to make a good Swedish Christmas table (skillz!!!). In Taupo we visited some hot springs and looked at Haka Falls. Camilla started to get sick unfortunately so she was resting at the Hotel for one of the days.

Taupo – Wellington:
Night ferry over to Picton arrived early in the morning.
Nelson – Westport:
We got to Nelson around 10 am so we had breakfast and reload time there before we headed further up the coast line. Made a really nice stop on a golden beach just in the outlet of a river. In the afternoon we past through great mountain chains and ended up on the west coast and Westport.
West coast:
After a good night at a very nice hostel in Westport we drove down the west coast great scenery roads with wast open sea and big mountains.
The road took us down past pancake rocks, Greymouth and alot of tourists. In the evening we arrived at the base of Franz Josef Glacier but we soon found out that there was no vacancy here and all places where full, so we drove for 1 hour more and ended up at Fox Glacier village. I had a great evening run up through the jungle forest to the root of the glacier while Peter and Camilla dined on a restaurant.

In the morning we took the car up to the glacier and walked up to the and looked at the ice, after that did we head further down the coast. We stopped at a place and made a 1 hour walk through the jungle down to the sea. It was really beautiful with high rocks in the water and big waves.
We carried on and the road soon turned up into the mountains and the hill lands. Now we started to see snow on the mountain peaks, after a few hours drive we entered Wanaka.

Wanaka, Queenstown:

Melford Sounds:

Mt Cook, Lake Tekapoo:

Christchurch:

Kaikora:

Wellington:

I have finally got me a new flat as the lease run out for my good and old one and the boys couldn’t sign for a new year. So now I have been searching for a week and just got a new home in a flat with 4 interesting people (1 guy and 3 girls) in a beautiful flat in Oriental Bay (wonderful view over Wellington and walking distance to work). I will move in soon the upcoming week, so will publish some photos here later.

Here is some pictures from our travel around in Otago down to Milford Sounds and up to Mt Cook.