[The pictures shown here are "thumbnails". Double-click on them to see something closer to the original.]
Queenstown is the "adventure capital" of New Zealand. This is where the first public bungy jump was made, and there are all sorts of interesting things to do, from white-water rafting to bungy to paragliding. The closest I came to danger was an exhilarating ride in a jet-boat on the Shotover River - careening through narrow canyons in a power boat at roughly 50 miles an hour.
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In Queenstown there is a cable car that takes you to the top of a neighboring mountain so you can get a vista of the whole place - the location is truly stunning. Can you see the para-glider in the picture? I came *that* close to trying it... But I wanted to preserve my body for... |
The Milford Track is advertised as "the most spectacular walk in the world" so as long as I was in this part of the world, I decided to see if the hype was true. The track is 33.5 miles long (for historical reasons they measure everything in miles, not kilometers - very convenient for us Yanks) and access is severely restricted: only a maximum of 80 people a day can start the track; you can only stay in designated areas; you must move on to a new area every day to make way for the people who are following you. Now, there are two ways to do the track: 1) Carry all your clothes, food, tents, sleeping bags etc. with you, and 2) Carry all of your clothes, but stay in bunk-style lodges with proper beds, hot showers and meals prepared by someone else. I chose option 2 - I don't mind tramping with a load on my back, but if you can spend a little extra and actually enjoy the trip, why not go for it?
The makeup of our group was very interesting - about half of the group was Japanese (the time around Christmas being one of their two mandatory 11-day vacation periods per year) and the other half a group of Anglos - mostly Americans , with a couple of Aussies and one German girl thrown in for good measure. We stayed mostly segregated during the trip, the Japanese mostly sticking together as a group toward the end and the rest of us striking out more or less independently in front. [We did have a fabulous game of rock/paper/scissors with the Japanese at the farewell dinner - all you need is something in common to bridge the language barrier.]
The first day of the trip was spent meeting our fellow travellers and journeying (via bus and boat) from the lovely lakeside town of Te Anau (picture later) to the beginning of the track proper. We took a short walk to see some of the local fauna and a lovely river (into which I fell while bending over too far while taking a picture - I told everyone it was refreshing, and it was).
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This was our first real day of walking. We followed the Clinton River for about ten miles toward its source. The water of the river was astonishingly clear and unpolluted - you could actually see 6-pound trout sitting in ten feet of water, though catching them was forbidden. [One of the most amazing things about this trip was the fact that we were actually encouraged to drink the water by the side of the trail. It was delicious.] |
The terrain changed during the day from flat, lovely forests at the beginning to a rougher, more alpine environment, complete with lovely little orchids and daisies. The further we got into the mountains the more waterfalls we saw, cascading down the ever-higher walls of the gorge surrounding us.
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One of the most spectacular falls dropped into Prairie Lake, where I stopped for an hour or more and did a little journal and letter writing. The sun was shining, the falls were roaring and all was right with the world. |
The next day dawned overcast and rainy. And it stayed overcast and rainy most of the day. The brochures had warned us about this: This area is almost the rainiest spot in the world, second only to some small Hawaiian island. It averages 20-30 feet of rain per year. (Yes, that averages out to a little less than an inch a day...)
The walk itself was the shortest distance we had to travel in a day - only nine miles, but included in that was a trip over the McKinnon Pass, 2,500 feet up on one side and 3,000 feet down on the other - oh, my achin' knees. Because of the weather we missed some of the more spectacular vistas promised on the trip, but somehow it really didn't matter too much.
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Isn't this a nice waterfall? No, it's actually the track! Granted, this was the worst of the water we had to travel through, but it was bad enough. (Those are the two Aussies, Peter and Brian, following me down the torrent.) |
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By the time we arrived at the hut the weather had cleared and we took a short (half-hour) hike to see Sutherland Falls (not named after Dame Joan) - the fifth highest waterfall in the world. The fact that it had rained so extensively made the waterfall itself especially spectacular. |
The final day of the track is the longest - about 13.5 miles, and we started out at the god-awful time of 7:30am. This is a vacation??? Luckily the weather had decided to clear, so the walk was very pleasant most of the time.
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Now we were following the Arthur River toward Milford Sound. The environment was almost rainforest-like: lots of moss and ferns and humidity. Later we went through some quite swampy areas (via elevated boardwalks) and a long, straight stretch to the end of the trail. |
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This is me at the end of the trail. Still smilin'
though my legs were killing me...
Those are people's boots hanging on the sign. I guess it's some sort of tradition. I'll keep mine for another trek, thanks. |
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We stayed the last night on the shores of Milford Sound. This was the view from my hotel room. Really. The boat cruise on the sound the next day was lovely, though a bit foggier than this shot. |
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From Milford Sound we took a bus back to Te Anau, where we were treated to a lovely sunset. At this point I contracted a pretty bad case of the flu, and the weather was pretty abysmal as well. |
I was healthy enough one day to go to a fascinating penguin sanctuary near Dunedin. Fifteen years or so ago a farmer found a pair of yellow-eyed penguins (or hoiho in Maori) had nested in one of his fields, which is next to a lovely sandy beach. He fenced off the area, built shelters for the birds to nest in, trapped the imported predators (ferrets, rabbits, cats - the only mammal native to New Zealand is the bat...) and watched the birds multiply. The hoiho is the rarest species of penguin in the world, and this reserve now has a count of more than 150. The most fascinating part of the story is that there are miles of covered trenches that allow human visitors to visit the birds.
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This is a picture of one of the penguins, Tom, and his mistress. Now, mostly, penguins mate for life. Tom was picked up at a very early age by an "older woman", Anne, who was 18 (penguins live for about 20-25 years) and had lost her mate. He's been with her for two years and they have successfully raised a couple of families. But while Anne is out fishing to feed the kids, it appears that Tom is sewing some wild oats. The scuttlebutt is that there's a divorce in the works. |
So that was it. I can recommend New Zealand as a wonderful place to visit - You could easily spend a whole vacation here and not even touch Australia. Though I wouldn't entirely recommend that!