Off to New Zealand

My wife and I are off to New Zealand tomorrow for one week. We're flying out of Adelaide about midday, to Sydney and then on to Christchurch. Arrival time in Christchurch is about 1am Friday which means we'll probably not get to the hotel until about 3am.

Spending Friday and Saturday in Christchurch. No definitive plans yet for what to see or do. My wife has compiled a brief list of possibilities.

Sunday morning we board the TranzAlpine train through Arthur's Pass to Greymouth. I'm probably looking forward to this train trip the most. I've not been on a train for about a year and I've not been on a train through any real mountainous terrain. Hopefully I can get a few good snapshots out the train window.

In Greymouth we pick up a hire car and head for the Franz Josef Glacier. A few photographic opportunities exist on the drive at Hokitika, Lake Wahapo, and Lake Mapourika. Not sure how much of the glacier we'll actually get to see. Depends on when we arrive and when we depart the next day.

Monday 22nd we depart Franz Josef Glacier headed for Queenstown. Possible stops along the way at Fox Glacier (just 20 or 30km from Franz Josef), Haast Beach, Wanaka, and the Queenstown surrounds.

The day after we are driving to Mt Cook to have a look and take photos. Then we drive back to Lake Ohau for the night. I am hoping this will provide good scenery and late afternoon light for some landscape photos.

On the 24th we head back to Christchurch, stopping at Lake Tekapo. Flying back to Adelaide, via Sydney, on Christmas day.

I'll be twittering (http://twitter.com/anthonycramp) as we go along, so feel free to follow me if you'd like to keep track. I also hope to be able to regularly upload photos to Flickr and you can keep track of my photostream (http://flickr.com/anthonycramp) if you are interested.

Or you can just subscribe to my FriendFeed and get everything in one place: http://friendfeed.com/anthonycramp.