Monthly Recap – January 2019
A recap of my adventures in the month of January
Welcome back to 2019! I started the year off on my Summer holidays, with some time at home and a week away in New Zealand.
Read on for my monthly recap.
SOUTH ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND TRIP
My first overseas trip in 12 months was to the South Island of New Zealand. We flew into Queenstown and were amazed as soon as we stepped of the plane at the view of The Remarkables mountain range. We got in trouble trying to take photographs on the runway!
For the first half of the week we stayed in a small cottage in Arrowtown, just out of Queenstown. We explored the local area, including Lake Wakatipu and Lake Hayes. It was just so beautiful!
One of the things we were most looking forward to was our day trip to Milford Sound. It was a big day driving the 4 hours there and back but with scenery like the river in the photograph above, we certainly enjoyed looking out the window!
Once we arrived at Milford Sound we headed out onto a two hour cruise. It was amazing and we had the best weather, unusual as the Milford Sound region gets over 300 days of rain annually.
Back in Queenstown we headed up the skyline gondola, for more amazing views of Lake Wakatipu and the Franklin Arm of the lake. It was also fun riding the toboggans on top of the mountain, however when I first heard about the toboggan I envisioned that you tobogganed all the way to the ground! Luckily its only around the top third, as the mountains are super steep.
After our 4 days in Queenstown and Arrowtown we headed north over the mountains to Lake Wanaka, another beautiful lake, and home of the famous ‘Wanaka Tree’. It is as beautiful as the instagram photos depict and hopefully tourists continue to respect the tree and it is around for years to come.
We stayed in Twizel, in the Otago region and continued our day trips, to Lake Tekapo, Lake Pukaki and Mt Cook. So basically just more and more amazing scenery! We only had one rainy day in the whole eight days.
In Mt Cook National Park we did a short walk (rain prohibiting us to do the longer walks) to Tasman Lake and the Tasman Glacier, on the look out for icebergs!
After 8 days we had to say goodbye to the beautiful landscapes of the South Island. We would definitely love to come back!
SUMMER SWIMS
Back home I enjoyed as many ocean swims as possible in the remaining days of my time off work. I even managed to do some laps in the ocean pools!
ART OPENINGS, AVALON
We attended the Avalon Summer Art Space opening, featuring 4 local artists including South African painter Diezel and abstract artist Andrea Edwards. Always nice to hang out in galleries with other like minded artists.
So that was January! A quiet time except for our adventures in New Zealand. Enjoyed some relaxing time at home before returning to work. Another year begins!
