February 21 - Milford Sound

From New Zealand

Another early morning - driving along the Milford Road from Te Anau to Milford Sound. A gorgeous strip of land with (more) mountains, streams, waterfalls and CLOUDS. A number of very nice walks for which we had very little time. We set a goal of being on a Milford Sound Cruise before the big tour buses arrived.

That doesn't mean that we didn't stop - nor that we didn't take a couple short walks.

Mirror lakes:

From New Zealand

Cascade Creek Walk:

From New Zealand

East Homer Nature walk - without the nature information cards.

From New Zealand

The Homer Tunnel - sight of THE highest alpine traffic light! (Sorry, you can't see the traffic light. There was nothing unusual about it - just the location was unique.)

From New Zealand

And, finally, the Chasm Walk. We buzzed through this walking loop - more to keep ahead of the pack of German tourists that were clogging the path than due to our time constraints. What we were instructed by our guide books to appreciate was the massive volume of water that moves through this area and I must say the streams and water falls were very impressive.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

We were very pleased to find Keas in the parking lot when we returned from our walk - just like the guide books said we might - and even more pleased to find they were not eating Anna and Andrew's car!

From New Zealand

The Milford Sound is really a fjord. (I love that word! I remember learning it in 3rd grade geography class. It hasn't gotten to be any less fun to say.) Our cruise took us through the fjord and into the ocean (just barely). We had chosen the "Nature Cruise" rather than the "Scenic Cruise" because we figured it would be hard to miss the scenic element of the location. So, along the way we nosed up to two spots where the fur seals like to snooze and even turned around in order to cruise with a small pod of bottle nose dolphins. The cliffs surrounding the sound (which isn't, really) were streaming with water falls thanks to the recent rainy days. Only a couple are always "on" and to appreciate them fully we pulled up with the bow of the boat underneath two of them. I didn't stand in the full spray - not good for my camera, you know - but Kevin got dampish.

After the cruise we retraced our path - now with sunshine

From New Zealand

- stopping only twice including a "redo" of the Mirror Lakes.

From New Zealand

Partly this was because I had taken the New Zealand original "Sea Legs" anti-motion sickness tablet prior to our cruise and, despite what the clerk at the chemist told me, I was very, very drowsy. Partly it was something else, of course. Glow Worms in Te Anau. We were hoping to get back in time to see the caves and still have enough hours left in the day to travel onward.

New Zealand - February 20

From New Zealand

Eventually the day comes when one must do laundry. That day would be Saturday, February 20. Interesting, there isn't much of a crowd in the laundry at 7 AM. The people who do come in tend to walk in, open a washing machine and look inside, then walk out. I do not understand.

From New Zealand

Our plan for the day - Queenstown. Added bonus? The road between Wanaka and Queenstown is the highest paved road in New Zealand. Woohoo! And, you probably will find this hard to believe - I mean - isn't just being high and paved enough? - but, no, there's more - it is scenic.

From New Zealand

Queenstown is a big tourist mecca which for us meant we struggled to find parking. On the other hand, it was easy to find a reasonably priced lunch. Our Queenstown highlights:

From New Zealand

Diving Ducks (Papango): For $5 you can enter the under water observatory and then, for only another $1, you can release food pellets. Trout, eels, and the New Zealand diving duck scramble to "eat them up, yum!".

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

The Gondola: Not the flat bottom boat or the passenger basket under a balloon, but the enclosed cabin suspected from an overhead cable. A beautiful trip up the mountain to get an overview of the Queenstown region, watch bungee jumpers, and ponder the toilet habits of the world. Here we learned a couple of useful things. If you decline the photo package (you and your party in the gondola!!!!), they will reduce the price and offer to break it up! (only the CD? only the postcards?) And, if you offer me only the postcards for $10, I'll buy them.

We enjoyed our walk up to the gondola but didn't go in to see the aviary or play miniature golf, though I've since been told it is phenomenal. We did drift through the cemetery and pause to pose for some photos for ourselves.

From New Zealand

Our evening lodging was scheduled, so we had to leave in the mid-afternoon. Te Anau. The beautiful landscapes were made more so by remembering that we were still alive.

From New Zealand

Te Anau - you have to love a place with a big blue chicken statue. This is the Takahe, once believed to be extinct - now, as we saw, to be very sleepy. They have a 20+++ year old female at the Te Anau Wildlife Centre. We visited her twice over the two evenings we spent in Te Anau. Two visits were necessary to feel like we were seeing a live bird.

From New Zealand

New Zealand - February 19 - out of the snow

From New Zealand

We debated traveling to see the "other" glacier - Fox Glacier. Ultimately, considering our limited time and what a fabulous experience we'd had already at Franz Josef (and, really, what more could you expect from a second glacier?) we decided to go to the lookout then push South.

The little off-road to the lookout and the path down to the look out were WAYYYYYYY better than the lookout. "That's it?" we asked a young man who was coming from the opposite direction. Yes, we'd seen the best view. There are no photos - and this doesn't even count as one of the photos I missed.

We did enjoy some spectacular views on our continued journey - including mountains,

From New Zealand

waterfalls,

From New Zealand

and forest trails.

From New Zealand

By far, however, the most exciting scene was something totally unexpected. Our road emerged once again at the seaside at Sandy Beach (Bruce Bay) and there stood for hundreds of feet a series of cairns. We added ours. Very simple. We're new at holy.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

We ended our day in Wanaka, home of the Cinema Paradiso - too late for the 6 PM showing of "Sherlock Holmes" and, as was to happen to us again and again and again in little cinemas across New Zealand, too unimpressed for a second (or third or forth or) viewing of "Avatar". We ate their pizza - very good - but were disappointed not to see the cinema itself, let alone enjoy a film from a car seat or comfy sofa. (One thing I'm sure of, however, is that the sofa would not have included a dog. New Zealand was very unfriendly toward dogs. Very.)

From New Zealand

Fashion victim

From New Zealand

Even combining my new year's eve resolution to look presentable in public with assigned clothing (jacket and pants), I manage to find my inner bag woman.

New Zealand - February 19 - Franz Josef Glacier

Another early morning on the road - destination Franz Josef Glacier. The most remarkable thing - it was sunny. (This becomes more amazing when we learn that the Glaciers get over 7 METERS of rain each year!)

Random thoughts.

It is OK to wear shorts. I worried about what to wear because jeans were verboten and I only had my blue jeans and a pair of black jeans. Denim they say will get wet and stay wet and your leg will fall off - or something to that effect. I changed into my shorts after I saw the fashionable and warm pants they had for us to wear.

Layers are good. Walking and climbing can get pretty sweaty. Standing around in walls of ice one cools off.

Hat and gloves. Even though they said we wouldn't need them - they were very nice to have.

Clamp on spikes. Watch out! Sexy and practical!

The photos follow our progress. From the point we entered the rocky "stream" leading to the glacier - from photo 2 - to the glacier was 2 km. Amazing! It didn't look an inch over 1.8 km.

The "ice cave" with the stream running through - we saw some of that ice - hunks - dropping off into the stream. Splash! Just like ice coming off the back wheel wells!

In the photo where people are looking over the edge at the glacier - look - you'll see 2 groups of people ON the glacier and they are very, very tiny. (Physics. Heat expands. People are smaller on ice.)

The hike involved climbing up, up, up a gravel wall - with a rope hand rail, thank you. During the journey across the boulder/gravel/rocks to the ice I was thinking NEVER AGAIN! Even with the spikes, the rocks would roll and I could imagine the tumble I was up for. Once we hit the ice, it was much easier.

It was a very, very cool thing to do - and I haven't even mentioned the fancy public toilets (the "Exeloo") in the little town of Franz Josef. Two thumbs up from both Kevin and Ann!

New Zealand - February 18 - The Western Highway

Get your motor running
Head out on the highway....

Thursday the 18th was a big driving day. We were taking on The Western Highway - dubbed by Lonely Planet as one of the planet's best road trips!!! Probably pretty high up in the universe, as well.

From New Zealand

First, we had to get to Westport from our mountain cabinesque sleeping spot at the Hu Ha Bikepackers. (They let us stay even though we had no bikes to pack.) And, you can't just drive drive drive, particularly when you are passing New Zealand's LONGEST SWING BRIDGE! So, we bridged then walked their little loop through the NZ rainforest - but we did not take the flying fox back. While everything was wet, wet, wet there was reason to hope that the sun might be coming out soon.

From New Zealand

You can always hope.

So the stunning scenery begins at Westport. Here, let me show you what we saw at our first look out.

From New Zealand

Amazing!

Perhaps if it were not raining so hard, it would have been more obvious that after you park your car near the picnic table you need to cross the highway at the hairpin curve to climb up to where the real lookout awaits.

From New Zealand

It continued to rain. Our stops to chase our breath were few.

From New Zealand

Eventually we came to Punakaiki National Park - the home of the Pancake Rocks. First, however, we needed to make arrangements for lodging overnight and register for climbing the glacier the next day. (Being on vacation we weren't really thinking that "tomorrow is Friday" and that weekends might be challenging for finding economical lodging near major attractions. These activities took longer than they sound. Oh, and we ate lunch!)

From New Zealand

Pancake Rocks: The waves crashing onto the shore were fabulous. This time I remembered the continuous function on my camera and so I have whole series of photos of waves approaching, cresting, exploding, receding. The down side? My camera got pretty wet and the view finder has never had the same clarity since. (It is still usable. This is not a tragic story.)

From New Zealand

Kevin identified an old ghost town so we detoured inland. Waiuta was a gold mining town - established in the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1951 the mine collapsed and since this was the source of employment for the entire community, they all left town. As we drove eastward the day brightened and there was no significant threat of rain remaining as we completed the 7 km dirt road leading into town. As you might expect, there are mostly building skeletons (foundations, chimneys). What you wouldn't guess unless maybe you knew something about gold mining was that there were signs posted everywhere describing what a toxic mess the ground was. By the time we'd seen the town and driven on to find the processing plant, the dark clouds had found us.

From New Zealand

And, then, we drove back to the coast. We were too late for both the National Kiwi Centre and the Hokitika Sock Machine Museum (oh no!). And, while we did stop at the Glow Worm Dell just outside of Hokitika - it is hard to appreciate a glow worm in the daylight! Most disappointing - we could not get to Okarito in time for the Kiwi safari (boasting a 90% success rate in finding kiwi in the WILD). We did reach our Thursday home in Hari Hari in time for the the "Criminal Minds" marathon.

Taking time out for a medical update

I saw the hematologist yesterday and my last two blood counts were completely normal. I am not considered normal, however, and I wonder if or when I ever will be. Will I forever be the woman who spent a year without neutrophils? Next check up, September.

New Zealand February 17 - Continues

From New Zealand

As we drove from Cape Farewell back down the narrow road to the "body" of the island we noted the mud-flat were gone - replaced with water lapping up to the green strip fringing the pavement. At the end of the spit road we took a short detour to Collingwood for lunch.

From Collingwood we needed to do a couple of hours of backtracking to get to the highway that would take us down the western coast. So, we had the opportunity to stop at some of the sights we'd passed up the day before.

Pupu Springs (Te Waikoropupu)- the largest freshwater springs in NZ and reputed to be the clearest in the world. We followed a short walking trail to the spring where we were disappointed not to recognize any sand dancing. Maybe sand doesn't dance in the rain. At the big spring pool stood a guide who was very knowledgeable and informed us about all sorts of spring facts and figures. Amazingly helpful for someone standing in the rain... but at least he had an umbrella.

From New Zealand

Ngarua Caves - Kevin was excited about seeing caves. He'd identified several in the South Island. One, Harwood's Hole, the largest cave in the Southern Hemisphere!!!, we had already decided to skip. (Eleven kilometers on an unsealed road then a 30 minute walk (in the rain) to peer into a big dark hole - no entry.) We pulled into the parking lot and split up as it was just past 4 PM and that was the time of the day's last tour. Kevin rushed in to see if we could get tickets while I found our coats. Everything worked out and the cave was a fine one - with all the stalactites and stalagmites a person could want, the mandatory turn off the lights ("this is what real darkness looks like"), and moa bones!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

Moas were a form of flightless birds. New Zealand is literally crawling (well walking) with flightless birds and these were particularly big flightless birds. Flightless birds do well on an island with no predators. Unfortunately for New Zealand birds, particularly the moa, the predator-free status changed. While many of NZ's are struggling to survive the introduction of stoats and ferrets, cats and dogs, the moa were wiped out by people. Giant chickens (up to 12 feet tall) - it was all too easy.

New Zealand - February 17 - Cape Farewell

From New Zealand

Our final stop on the Farewell Spit - Cape Farewell - The northernmost point on the South Island - but you knew that. Kevin's a big fan of superlatives. I think it because he's such a tall person with a freakishly large head.

From New Zealand

Another walk through pasture ending not at a beach but at a cliff. (Stay behind the safety railing! Hold onto children lest they be blown off!) Sheep. Seals. Waves. And, the introduction of .... rain.

From New Zealand

New Zealand - February 17 - Wharariki Beach

From New Zealand

Our next stop on our tour of the spit was Wharaniki Beach. What a fabulous hike! Yet another set of steps skirting fencing and then a narrow trail across rolling pasture land. (It is here Kevin first used the phrase "commonplace grandeur".) As we neared the coast, the trail turned to sand. Then, sand, dunes, wind, rocks, waves! It is here we spot our first seal - napping on a rock ledge.

Being very excited about our "find" we told a family we'd passed who had made the trek with 2 young children. "Over there. On a rock across the inlet. Seal." They were not suitably impressed. I'm not even sure they walked over to look.

We also enjoyed the sea weed. (We are simple folk.)



We brought a lot back from Wharariki Beach. A lot of sand. Really. A lot. Even after stopping and emptying my shoes on the beach then when we got back to the car. We were carrying my own little dunes inside our socks!

New Zealand - February 17 - Farewell Spit

From New Zealand

We got up early and quietly showered and breakfasted then hit the road. We drove in the thin morning light to the Farewell Spit visitor center on a narrow road with muddy flats extending from the ditch to the horizon. We parked - first car in the lot then followed the signs - across the lane then up and over the barbed wire fence and through a field to the lookout. Everything was quiet. Everything was grey.

From New Zealand

Retracing our steps we followed a second path from the parking lot around the visitor's center (still not open) and then down a hill, through a gate, and onto the salt marsh. The smelly marsh. One of the things, besides a lighthouse, we had read about the area was the tremendous numbers of birds who make the spit their home. We did see birds - but the tide was way out and the thousands of birds were spacing themselves pretty evenly over miles of shore. Still, out there, there were a lot of teeny, tiny black swans.

From New Zealand

From the beach we followed the trail inland along a pasture ("hello sheep!") emerging on the "other side" : dunes, beach, waves. It was a bit eerie. Kevin and I alone on this desolate beach. We looked for the rumored pools filled with playful seal pups but found none. We did not get lost.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

We couldn't identify a "loop" back to the car park, so we retraced our path. By the time we returned to the park's visitor center, it and the cafe were open. I required very little arm twisting to convince me it was time for second breakfast - tea and toast overlooking the muddy portion of the beach. Finishing our pot of tea we studied the photographs of beached whales and enjoyed the telescope - spying on the swans.

From New Zealand

New Zealand - February 16 - Moving on!

From New Zealand

By the time we left the Abel Tasman park the sun was committed to shining and we had decided to go as far west as possible. Our goal was the Farewell Spit - a skinny peninsula that juts north and hooks east from the upper left hand side of the South Island of New Zealand. We called two companies that conduct tours of the spit and decided we'd do anything except a three hour tour, a three hour tour. The unfortunate thing was that we can't do any tour unless the tide is right (high/low, I don't remember) and that would mean we'd need to spend a second night there because any tour, and the shortest was that 3 hour tour, couldn't start until 2 PM. So, we decided to not commit to a tour and see what we could see on our own.

From New Zealand

The drive was filled with beautiful green/blue mountains and green/yellow valleys. The peace and grandeur only interrupted by intermittent shrieks from the passenger seat as Kevin wound up and down the narrow mountain highways. On occasion we'd stop for a lookout or a short walk.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

New Zealand - February 16 - Abel Tasman National Park

On Tuesday we got up, ate breakfast at McDonald's (it is important to eat at McDonald's at least once in every country - it is a little known requirement ex-pats need to maintain their American citizenship). After, we moseyed down the road to the Abel Tasman National Park.

New Zealand has a list of what are considered "great walks". These are great in both breathtaking scenery and length. One such walk is in the Abel-Tasman park. Kevin had identified a short section of the track that is supposed to be both typical and lovely - a 2 to 3 hour hike between Bark Bay and Torrent Bay. Unfortunately, you can't actually get to Bark Bay or Torrent Bay by land. We needed a water taxi and the morning run had just left.

So, we followed the suggestion provided by the woman working at the "taxi station" and drove out to then hiked down to see the big, broken rock - Split Apple Rock. As you see in the photo, New Zealand was maintaining its ban on sunshine during the first portion (two-thirds) of the day.

From New Zealand

The water taxi ride - a trip of about 40 min - was great! We had THE dolphin experience of our lives. A pod of half of dozen or more dolphins, including one or two calves, followed our boat along for several minutes. I was so excited I forgot how to set my camera on continuous shooting. Still, I think it speaks to just how close and how long we traveled together, I got a couple good photographs. Well, I liked them OK.

From New Zealand

The walk, as advertised, was great - along the coast and through the forest. Before it ended the sun emerged. Perfect!

From New Zealand