last days in NZ

our 4 weeks in NZ has passed quickly, we have two days left. from queenstown we headed down to te anau, with the intention of going to milford sound, probably the most famous attraction in NZ. unfortunately for us, two big storms rolled through and the area got 8 inches of rain overnight and a few thousand lightening strikes. there were landslides on the road, so they closed the road to milford sound for a few days and had to helicopter evac people off the milford track.

we headed down along the south coast to dunedin and did some easy climbing on the beach. then headed to mount cook and it cleared enough to see the lower glaciers. headed back to the coast to timaru, where we spent an hour searching for a climbing area which is supposed to have a 10 minute approach (we never found it) to the sounds of animals (cows?) screaming because they were being slaughtered. a horrific and disturbing sound.

then headed to castle hill, world renown for the bouldering, and bouldered a little. mostly walked around because erick can't really boulder and risk falling on his bad knee and i'm a big wuss, especially when we didn't have a crashpad.

new zealand was nice and fun, although we did a lot less hiking and climbing than we expected due to erick's accident. we think he has a minor sprain in his left knee, probably will be another month before it feels good, another few months before it's at full strength.

next up, we head to australia for our final country. we'll spend some time in melbourne with family and meet up with my parents. then we'll take a week trip with them to tasmania and hopefully some climbing after that, knee dependent. we're looking forward to sleeping in beds again after camping every night in NZ, good food and wine as well.