I'm back!

Phew. I'm back from my two week adventure round the South Island of New Zealand, and... I don't even know where to start! I'm going to do a chronological series of blogs about all the cool things I did/places I went, but for now I'm just going to share some of my favourite pictures that I took. I ended up taking over 300, but looking through them all they start to merge into one big mountain/lake/sea vista.
So here we go:
A view of Cockle Cove in the Marlborough Sounds, my first stop. (The water is coming right up to the shore, it's just amazingly clear.)
















We got off the bus while driving from Abel Tasman national park to Barrytown for a beautiful coastal walk. Suddenly there were horses up on a ridge right abve the sea!







The sun was setting by the time we got to Pancake rocks, some awesome rock formations on the West coast.







We did a walk through some rainforest on our way to Franz Josef glacier-- here's the sun coming through a punga (New Zealand fern tree).





Our guides cutting steps on the terminal face of the Franz Josef glacier as we begin our hike up it.
















Water running through some of the blue ice of the glacier. Sometimes we walked by water that really sounded like an underground drain because it was echoing so loudly.














Me walking through a crevasse on the glacier.









We crossed the 45th parallel, which is apparently officially "Down Under." The sun had just come out when we made this stop, meaning a short photo break turned into a competition involving jumping off the marker.









Finally some fall colours on the way to Queenstown!










One of our group takes the leap at the world's first commercial bungee jump site.













Some fresh snow on the mountains behind Kaikoura on our last day!










And that's it for now! More soon.