southland part 1

On the road again! We have a week to spend down south, so we left after clinic on Thursday to drive 8.5 hours to Queenstown. Good thing Josh likes road trips.

Sunrise in Queenstown.

Someone stole my phone!

Off to explore.

Miss Lucy's for our miss Lucy!

The plan for today was to go to Milford Sound (which is another 4 hours drive from Queentown) via small plane (thus saving the 8 hours roundtrip drive) with a boat ride of the sound...buuuut it was not to be. Ahhh, weather. So that makes us 0/2 to see Milford (the last time we were here we had a series of unfortunate events on our attempt to do the Great Walk: the plane couldn't land in Queenstown, we found the last rental car in Dunedin, then since we missed the ferry to get to the start of the trail we had to find a guy with a boat to take us, and THEN it was raining so much no one could actually leave the huts and we ended up having to walk out in hip high water in some places, and the other huts got helicoptered out).

So! Since that didn't work out, Magda saw a brochure in our Airbnb and found a steamboat ride to a farm where you could have a BBQ lunch and see sheepdog and animals. Off we went!

This is Frankie in the museum portion of the ship, the SS Earnslaw. Love the portholes!

Exploring the ship!

Cute kids.

It was a gorgeous day.

And quite windy!

Watching the steam engine at work.

Enjoying the breeze.

View from our BBQ lunch!

The girls were VERY excited about the dessert offerings.

The grounds were full of gorgeous roses!

Sheepshearing and sheep dog demonstrations.

I just want to squeeze them.

Highland cooooo! (pretend I have a great Scottish accent)

Headed back.

I had some fun with portrait mode.

So much fun!

Giant moa statue.

Ice cream for dinner!

Leaving Queenstown with gorgeous views!

Hot chocolate stop in Invercargill.

On the ferry to get to Stewart Island-New Zealand's third largest island, 30 km off the South Island, home to around 450 year round residents and an estimated 20,000 kiwi. :) The ferry crosses the Foveaux Strait, which can be notoriously rough. And it was a crazy crossing-huge waves! No one actually puked, thank goodness.

Albatross!