After leaving Queenstown, I headed south to Te Anau and then onto Milford Sound. I did a boat ride out in the fjord and it was a beautiful sunny day. Milford Sound was pretty - lots of perfect U-shaped valleys carved by glaciers. It looked kind of like Halong Bay in Vietnam. After Milford Sound, I headed down to Invercargill which is at the bottom of the south Island and then took the ferry to Stewart Island which is to the south of the South Island. It's at 47 deg S and is a bird sanctuary. I did a few walks and then headed to Dunedin on the east coast the next day. Dunedin is a Scottish-origin town and has a large university. I went to the world's steepest street here and took a tour of the Cadbury factory. Then I headed back to Queenstown where I did a winery tour of the central Otago region.
The last stop in New Zealand was Christchurch where I spent five days. Here I did a day tour to Mt. Sunday which served as Edoras in Lord of the Rings. It was incredibly beautiful and really did feel like middle earth. There was a rock outcrop in the middle of a valley surrounded by 360 deg of snowcapped mountains. The weather was gorgeous that day too. In Christchurch I went to the International Antarctic center and saw (at least the building) for the US Arctic program.
