Well we have been on the south island about three weeks so I will try to run through the main events. The weather has been quite changeable ranging from warm with light winds to very strong winds to cold and rainy depending when and where we happen to be.
I got a couple of flights in, in the small town of Havelock in the Marlborough sounds, which have quite incredible scenery,the day after we arrived, therefore getting that all important “fix”.

We moved over to Nelson and stayed there a couple of nights and then went with some of the local pilots to Takaka Hill in Golden Bay for a fantastic flight where we stayed for around a week. We stayed a couple of nights at the only resident pilot Matt’s “holiday home”. We hiked a small part of the famous Abel Tasman trail near Totaranui, hiked a remote trail on Cobb Ridge, stayed on the remote Tasman coast and really liked this whole area and it’s inhabitants. ( but NOT the sand flies) which were unpleasant. We also visited a virgin HG site that Matt had cleared out at Wanui but after setting up the weather did not co-operate but the views and area were well worth it especially the later visit to Wanui Falls which were pretty darned amazing.

We then headed south down the wet west coast where we ended up at the Rainforest Retreat in Franz Josef on Xmas eve. It rained all that day and night and started clearing on Xmas day. We headed off to the the Franz Josef glacier and hiked around an hour to get as close to the base of it as is allowed with a the crowds of tourists brave enough for a drizzling Xmas day stroll.

We then headed down the road to the Fox Glacier. The clouds were clearing by now and the sun even made an appearance.

We headed inland over the Haast pass the next morning as the road is closed at night due to a severe washout with fatalities back in September. We arrived in Wanaka with about 30,000 other folks not realizing that this town swells by 30,000 folks during the Xmas to New year holiday. I did however get the best flying conditions yet and managed to get 3 flights off “Treble Cone” in three days with a few logistical problems. I managed to fly a little XC up the valley and it was not until after I had landed and Debbie was creeping up the severely wash boarded road that she pointed out the Rob Roy glacier was there just a little further on.

We got the glider packed up and headed further up the road to the trail head and hiked up the exciting track to the lookouts just below the glacier.

We ran off to Dunedin to escape the Wanaka holiday crowds and got to tour the Speight’s Brewery and the Cadbury’s factory during the rainy and windy weather there. We tried to hook up with some pilots near Mount Cook for New Years but the weather did not work out so we checked out Mount Cook and some more glaciers.

We headed south to Invercargill area where we hung out through some very windy days and hiking out the interesting windswept trail to the Bluff lookout

We are now on our way to Queenstown where hopefully a bit of Hang Gliding will be committed and then of to the Fiordlands for some more amazing scenery overload.

We have so many photos we will be making some more galleries as time and inclination permits. Happy New Year!!