Skyline experience

This familles trip went from Queenstown to the skyline facility up on the mountain at the top of the gondola line. We had a full day with the most of the different activities that are offered up there. First of all we started off with mountainbiking down some of the tracks that runs through the forest down the mountain side. The mountainbiking was a lot of fun  as I have never had the opportunity to try it before with such a high quality bike and down such good tracks. Unfortunately I did not get any footage from the mountainbiking.

Queenstown luge

 After a couple of runs it was time to leave the bike and go for some lugeing at the tracks just above the Skyline complex building. The lugeing is incredibly fun and I strongly suggest that everyone who comes to visit Queenstown makes sure to try it. The luge sled is plastic and you navigate it with a handle bar similar to the one on an old bicycle. It runs on 3 wheels and the track is made of concrete. There are two different tracks, a slow and a faster one basically. As a safety precaution you have to ride the slow track once before they let you on to the faster track. Since people tend to go off the track every now and then it is just fair that they have had a practice run at the slow track before taking on the faster one. I actually found the luge to be so much fun that I am thinking of ways to hopefully set up something similar to that somewhere one day.

After a couple of good luge races it was time to head inside for a Kiwi Haka show. The show included singing and dancing by a group of people dressed up as ancient Maori people. Their war dances were fun to watch and they also invited some people from the audience to participate which was really cool.

                     The Ledge Bungy

 As a great finish of the whole day we got to go and jump off from "The Ledge" which is a Bungy jump bridge located just outside the Skyline complex. This whole day was filled with 3 activities that is really my kind of activities so to say. The bungy jump combined with the Lugeing and the Mountainbiking made this day into one of the best days I can ever remember having.

Milford sound

This familles journey was an overnight trip to Milford Sound. We travelled there from Queenstown by bus. The bus trip was quite long but the surroundings along the way were really cool and the bus driver had a lot of interesting things to tell about all the different places we passed along the way so overall it was a good nice bus trip.

On the way between Queenstown and Milford Sound me and some guys from my class formed a boy band. "the fellowship of the chasm" -->
As you can see we are becoming what the Backstreet Boys once were 

After a couple of hours in a bus your body loves a good stretch.

 

  Owls?

When arriving to Milford Sound we got on board this Real Journeys ship on which we were going to live. We were all showed to our rooms and after bringing all our things to the rooms we met up in the dining room to meet the Real journeys staff. After dinner which was served about an hour later we cruised for a while through the most awesome landscape. The ship went through this fiord and at both sides there were several hundred meters high cliff walls with some vegetation and high waterfalls here and there. A couple of times the ship went close .in under some waterfalls which was awesome since I have never experienced a scenery like that before. Later on we went for a little kayak turn around the area in which the ship was anchored. It was truly amazing to paddle out on my own for a closer look at this landscape that was way over my expectations. We even came up close with some fur seals who were resting on some rocks. After that little kayak trip we spent the rest of the night at the ship chilling out, playing games and so on before going to bed.

The Real Journeys ship that took us through the fiord

Awesome landscape!
(very lord of the rings-ish)

This waterfall you could guess to be around 70-80 meters high but was actually about 350-400 meters.

In the morning some of us went bathing and jumping off from the upper deck of the ship. Then the cruise continued back through the fiord to have some more looks at the awesome landscape. On the way back we passed a group of fur seals who were rolling around in the water. The ship stopped and one of the staff members told us that the fur seals had been out hunting and feeding the whole night and were now rolling around to get their digestion going. It looked quite funny and it was an interesting fact to learn.

                           Good morning!

After the cruise ship had returned to its harbor place just before noon we got off and traveled out to a beach from where we were going to have a sea kayak trip through another part of the same fiord. That sea kayak trip was amazing. Our guide (Matt) was very much fun and during the whole trip we got to see a whole lot of the really cool landscape. For example we went through the most awesome landscape I have ever been in, went in under a huge waterfall, and also up very close to some sea lions who rested on some rocks.

That sea kayaking trip was really cool and a lot of fun. One of the funniest moments in my life actually was when this guy Robbie from my class explained to me what a "shart" was and I laughed so hard for the next 20 minutes so that I almost tipped the sea kayak over several times.

One incredible sea kayaking experience.

After we had stopped to eat at the shore, all of a sudden the wind increased a lot so the group rafted up(put our kayaks together) and we held up this sail which the guide brought along and we sailed along the fiord for a couple of kilometers. That was awesome because we actually managed to gain quite a lot of speed there for a while.

At the end we went into a very calm area where our kayak managed to be maneuvered in under some low hanging branches from a tree and therefore capsized. I guess that made everyone's day a bit more joyful, except for our guide Matt who explained how he now had some extra paperwork to fill out.

 Several hundred meters high waterfall seen from the sea kayak.











 Going back to Queenstown.









 The ride home was relatively fast also which was nice as we were all quite tired after a very rich day.
Overall I must say this was a truly awesome trip and I can definitely recommend others to go to Milford Sound. Real Journeys staff really made it into something special. The staff from Milford wilderness experience (our sea kayak guides) were the best. They definitely made it into a day one will never forget.

Walter Peak 10/1/12

Our first familles was a half day trip to walter peak station. In the morning we met up down at the steamer wharf and got on Real Journeys old classic steam ship the TSS Earnslaw also known as "the lady of the lake". The trip across the lake over to Walter Peak took about an hour and during that journey we got to take a good look around on board the ship, see how the crew worked, how the steam engines worked and take part in a few historic details which actually was quite interesting.

When we got to walter peak a farmer held a demonstration of how to work his sheepdog to collect the sheep and how to shear a sheep. He also talked a bit about and showed some of the other animals at the farm. Even though it was not the first time I visited a farm I found it to be really cool and informative.

After the farmer had held his demonstration we were served a delicious barbeque lunch. The weather was really good that day so the lunch at the outdooor serving could not have been much better than it was that day.

When lunchtime was over we all met up in the indoor dining room to have a chat with Real Journeys operating manager Angus who told us a few things about his managing role and how the organisation is built up.

Just before it was time to head back to the ship we had a short wine tasting and played some petanque on the beachfront.
On the way back to Queenstown we all engaged in a very entertaining sing along onboard the Earnslaw.

Once back in Queenstown we headed up to the gardens and completed some group(teambuilding) tasks before calling it a day.

(....unfortunately I do not have any pictures available from this day but it will be much more of that from future familles trips)