Its the beginning of summertime in New Zealand. With the  engineering office shut down for a few weeks over Christmas, Stephen and I headed up to the north of the South Island to visit his parents for the holidays. We lucked out. While the rest of the South Island was experiencing a cold spell and rain storm, we ended up with a majority of beautiful, sunny days.

It was nice to spend time with everyone and kick back and sip some wine at the wineries – a new one for me. But, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t suggest going on some adventures….

I had always wanted to do the Travers-Sabine Track in Nelson Lakes National Park (about a 6 day tramp which covers a large part of the park and has one alpine pass and a majority of river walking). We wanted to spend some time with Stephen’s family, so we opted to do a 3 day version. My requirements for the tramp were an alpine pass, visit to Blue Lake (the clearest water in the world) and to minimise river walking (which means sandflies!). So, I suggested we grab a water taxi across the lake, have a long day walk to Blue Lake, tent for the night, climb climb and climb to the the top of Moss Pass, and water taxi back across the lake – so that was the plan.

We ended up sticking to the plan for the most part. The colours at Blue Lake were amazing – vibrant green and blue and the clearest water you will ever see. Our climb over Moss Pass was challenging in a simple term – it felt like we should have rock climbing harnesses for parts. Scary, but definitely feeling accomplished, and grateful to have had Stephen with me 🙂 We got over the pass and down the steep drop on the other side and stopped at a riverside hut we came across. It was another 3.5 hours to the next campsite, so we decided we should just stay at the hut for the night and have a nice supper and recharge. It was actually a really nice historic hut – and turns out we had it all to ourselves for the night 🙂 The next day we walked out (almost running at some points) just in time to make our water taxi and back to Stephen’s parents’ house.

In addition to going tramping, we also took a day trip out Cape Campbell – I love lighthouses. It was a windy day, but still beautiful day for the beach. It was a relatively long walk along the beach to reach the lighthouse (careful to mind our timing with low tide, so the path would be passable). I had a lot of fun walking and laughing – an easy day with lots of smiles 🙂

Really, it was a fantastic trip, and I enjoyed being with a family. You can check out more about the adventures on the NZ page soon.