Day 84 Mt Cook to Kaikoura

This was largely a travel day as we were up early to get on the road for about a six hour drive thru the beautiful pastoral countryside. However, before we left Mt Cook revealed itself as the sun came up and illuminated the mountain against the bright blue background of a New Zealand sky. Our patience was rewarded and we were able to see up close the most majestic peak in the "Southern Alps".
We spent the rest of the day in the van traveling to our next stop Kiakoura, which is the whale watching capital of the country. We are staying in rather unique quarters this evening. We are in what they call tree houses. These are separate little buildings warmly furnished appointed with wood stoves, perched about 20 feet off the ground on stilts up among the trees. We had a delicious dinner and retired to one of the three rooms to watch "Lord of the Rings" which was filmed on the north island of New Zealand.
It has been a cherished experience to travel with the kids. Even though we have another 8 days or so it is great fun to see them enjoying each other and experiencing New Zealand with us. I am sure all parents will appreciate how special this can be. We all would have liked Scott's fiancee, Emily to be able to join us for this incredible experience.
Tomorrow Whale Watching then off to Picton to catch the ferry to the north island the next day.

Scott (Guest Blogger) - Hanging out Swiss Family Robinson style tonight in the tree house. It has been a great week full of adventure, beautiful scenery and our typical Stubbins Family shenanigans. It takes a fair bit of humor to share a van with the same 6 people for 2 straight weeks. We have been covering this epic country by van in 2, 4 and 8 hour chunks; good thing we were trained at an early age to travel long distances by car. All those childhood 10 hour trips to Canada are paying off now.

As my father mentioned above, it would have been nice to have my fiancee Emily with us on this trip. Being a world away from loved ones is always hard, but particularly when trying to navigate moving and a wedding. While she would love the gorgeous scenery and the family bonding, I'm not sure that there is enough ginger and motion sickness drugs to for her to enjoy the windy roads and long drives of this trip. We are fortunate to have the ever positive and the ever factual William to pass the time. It is impossible to stump our guide on the name of any: landmark, fauna, or local animal. I'm not sure I could name as many things in Cincinnati, much less a country.

We've made our way from the mountains and plains of the south part of the South Island, to the eastern coast. We've had our first sighting of the ocean and we look forward to a morning with the whales tomorrow. We've had an amazing trip thus far and we can't wait to see what is coming next. That being said, it will be pretty hard to beat a real life tree house right on the Pacific.