WOW!! !The South Island of New Zealand!

We flew over to New Zealand on Thursday, April 7. We flew to Christchurch so that Dave could visit Eaton's facility there. We got there at about 1:00 AM, rented a car and made our way to our hotel in the dark. Not good for our first driving experience on the left side of the road! At least the roads were not crowded! We didn't look around too much in Christchurch, there really is quite a bit of damage from the earthquake in February. I've got 1 picture from close by our hotel, but I felt like it was just kinda wrong to  take a bunch of pictures of the destruction.

The buildings on either side looked like nothing had happened. Reminded me of tornado damage, one structure destroyed and the one next door is just fine.

So, we left Christchurch on Friday about 1PM and started our drive. The map shows the route we took over the 4 days we were in New Zealand.

It took about 6 hours to drive from Christchurch to Queenstown. The following pictures we took on the way there. The terrain started out looking like the Willamette Valley, with lots of green farmland. Then it became more like Eastern Oregon or Washington, big hills but brown, with not many of trees. Beautiful though.

Sheep!!!

By the time we got to Queenstown, it was dark. See the next post for beautiful Queenstown!