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:

Hang on there! As soon as I have all my stuff sorted I will publish a long story with pictures about what me, my Dad and Sister were up to when we travelled New Zealand for Christmas and New Years.

In Queenstown now together with heaps and heaps of other happy people to celibrate new years eve.

It has been the warmest weather so far and the best in the New Zealand at the moment.

We hope you all will have a great new years eve back home in Sweden.

I have just picked up my father and sister from the airport. It took them 2h to get out the slowest customs in the world and the airline had forgotten there luggage in London. So now they are at my place with only hand luggage. As soon as I finish all my extra work I need to do we will make some chicken burgers in the sun. So fun to finally have them here, just missing my mom , who did not like the 34h flight and leave the dogs back home. Hope you are doing well  mom, will call you soon .

Last Sunday the office got our Christmas present from work, a payed ticket to “Toast Martinbrough”. Martinbrough is famous for all its wineries, good wines and the Toast they have once every year. All the Wineries (around 10 of them) offers wine testing, good food and music in there wine gardens. So there you are a hot summer day with thousands of drunk people lolling around testing wines.

We started of with a calm 1 hours train journey up to Featherston. There we got our wine glass (ticket) and maps, we got on a bus that took us up to the wineries. We spent some time at the first one where the company bought us food testers and it was very nice. Antony bought my a “Whitebait” sandwich, that is made of small fish “Whitebaits” that ate caught as they swim from there breading grounds down to the see. You get them raw mixed in scrambled eggs on a toast, a real Kiwi delicacy.

The rest of the day we walked along on our own testing wines in different wineries and listened to music on festival grounds.

The last stop we got to was a smaller garden with a small scene. Soon an Irish inspired liveband kicked in and suddenly everyone was one there feet dancing. Evans girlfriend Denise is Irish and had some Irish friends with her so we all had a real good time.

Unfortunately, just as it couldn’t get any better we had to leave in order to catch our train back home. So at 6pm we got on the train and left for home, I took a well deserved sleep on the train and back on the train station a group of us continued in a pub before I got a cab home.