Happy New Year!

Just a quick post wishing everyone a very Happy New Year and wonderful 2010. No pictures for this post as we're using an Internet terminal at the New Zealand Alpine Club and there's no wireless to upload our pictures from our laptop.

Although we had the option of WWOOFing over New Year's we decided instead to spend it at Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. We spent New Year's Eve at the Glencoe Lodge, one of the lodges in the park. We didn't realize it had a Scottish theme until at New Year's there was a big speech by a guy in a kilt with a sword (his combination of Scottish and New Zealand English was completely unintelligible) and then a rendition of Auld Lang Syne set to bagpipes. Then it was back to our dorms for the night!

We're headed towards Queenstown and Milford Sound today. The beauty of the South Island is amazing. The weather has been pretty good actually. The West Coast was raining (sounds familiar :-) but once we crossed over into the Eastern side it's been sunny and nice. Super windy, but we were able to do a nice hike yesterday up to the Sealy Tarns and across a suspension bridge above a glacial river. Oh, and caves! We did a river walk through a cave that took us 45 minutes! There was no natural light so we used our headlamps to navigate up and over boulders and through waterfalls. We'll post a full report with pictures soon!

Have a safe and happy New Year's!!