New Zealand 2005 Trip Video

The trip to New Zealand was the result of one of Nick's semesters abroad. We joined him after he finished his classes and took a 2 week road trip around the South Island. Since Nick had been to many of the places he helped with the itinerary and served as a guide.

Getting there had its issues. Deb and I flew from Tulsa to LAX to meet up with Erin who was flying in from the East Coast. We waited and no Erin. Her flight delay meant we would miss our 16 hour flight to Auckland and connection to Christ-Church. That itself is just a nuisance but this was somewhat pre-cell phone and we had no way of contacting Nick. Deb worked the logistics and sent me on our scheduled flight, waited for Erin and took the later flight. Bad news for them is they got shoved in next to the toilet (16 hours worth of other people's business), couldn't get a vegetarian meal on the flight and ended up eating nothing but sugar packets. The good new for me was I had a 3-in-a-row seat and no one showed up. Of course not, they were on another flight. 16 hours in economy but 3 seats to lie down. Worked for me!

The four of us met up in Christ-Church and began the trip in earnest on July 3. Don't forget, this is winter in New Zealand but being where it is in the Pacific Ocean, the temperature was comfortable. We hung around Christ-Church for a couple days and then went to Mt Cook, Dunedin, Queenstown and Wanaka. Then we crossed over to the west coast and up to Greymouth seeing some glaciers on the way. Then up to Nelson on the north end of the island and south again on the east side of the island, ultimately back to Christ Church. Where we didn't go was Fiordland National Park and Milford Sound; they were too far out of the way for this trip.