Mar. 1: Adventure-Town - Queenstown!

As we headed north back to Queenstown, the fog was thick in the valleys.  We hoped it would lift so that we could enjoy the spectacular mountain scenery surrounding Queenstown.  And we were rewarded - as we drove around the east side of Lake Wakapitu, the fog burned off the reveal the mountain ranges that rise upwards from the lakeshores.  Took some pics with the other tourists and arrived in Queenstown.  My heart was set on doing some jetboating, highly recommended by friends who've visited Queenstown, and Barry was going to relax for a few hours in town.  There are 5 different companies that offer jetboating action, ranging from wild canyon rides to longer cruises in the Dart River.  Since we wanted something quick, I went for the most popular canyon boating option - the Shotover Jet.  So....

From the gondola lookout in Queenstown

The Shotover Jet runs about every half hour, as the ride lasts only about 25 minutes.  And once you arrive at their Shotover River office (an 8 km shuttle ride from downtown), they quickly throw you a lifejacket and a rubber water robe (it's basically like the cover you wear at a hair salon to protect your clothers), and line you up at the pier to wait for your boat.  Our boat was only about 3/4 full, so of course I choose an edge seat to get as close as possible to those canyons!  I didn't regret it either, as it is definitely more thrilling when the driver zooms you just under cliff edges and you feel like you have to duck your head to avoid getting clocked!  Makes me wonder why we don't wear helmets, as there's a very small margin for error on these rides.  These drivers supposedly get something like 120 hours of training before they can captain these boats - it helps that they are young guys who aren't afraid of what could happen.  Anyhow, it was definitely a good thrill.  Highlights for me were the close canyon turns and going upriver against the rapids!  We did lots of 360 degree spins on the river but they weren`t that scary after awhile.  Amazingly, these jet boats can speed along on only inches of water - the river was very low and we thought sometimes we were hitting the bottom but apparently those were just the rapids we were jumping over. 
After the boat ride, Barry and I met up again in town and we walked up to the Skyline gondola and decided to combine with some luge rides at the top.  These aren`t the luges you find at Canada Olympic Park (thank god!), they are sit-down sleds with handlebars to steer and control your speed.  The views from the gondola and the lookouts at the top were fantastic - you can see why people are drawn to Queenstown for holidays.  I can imagine this would alot of fun in the winter too.  As for the luge rides - really fun, I wish we`d gone for more than the 2 rides!  I was starting to feel that lure of all the adrenalin activites you can experience in Queenstown - there were paragliders taking off from the gondola and I was starting to consider it.  So much to do, so little time, and we had a flight to catch the next morning back to Auckland.  Sigh....

Quiet Te Anau and Majestic Fiordland

Sat. Feb. 26 to Mon. Feb. 28, Staying in Te Anau

This time I've included a small map of the area we're visiting, so you have a better idea of where the heck in New Zealand we're talking about!   Te Anau is in the southwest corner of the South Island, one of the colder and wetter parts of NZ.

A "greenstone" from Arrowtown

View from roadside en route to Arrowtown

We arrived in Te Anau in the late afternoon after driving from Wanaka, through Arrowtown and Queenstown on the way south.  The drive was surprisingly easier than we thought it would be, with only a few hairy moments twisting and turning on 180 degree cliffside turns on the way down to Arrowtown.  But what views on the way!  Arrowtown is an old gold miners town, and they've kept the main street looking as historical as they can.  It's a quaint town, but kind of a tourist trap as well with lots of little shops and restaurants to spend your money in.  We waited a a half hour for our coffees at a French cafe, something we're running into more and more in NZ - long waits for ordered food/drinks.  I think they're having a tough time getting enough workers for restaurants. Anyways, after getting our coffees we spent an hour or so on their river walkway, where I thought I'd found some real NZ greenstones.  Unfortunately I don't think the stones qualify as official "pounamu", a sacred green stone for the Maori culture.

After a quick lunch of Thai curry rice bowls in Queenstown (really yummy), we carried on to Te Anau.  Stayed at another Bella Vista motel there and made a last minute booking for the next day to go on a Milford Sound bus tour and cruise - Barry and I were both tired of being drivers and looked forward to turning off our brains and having someone else take us around to the sights!!

Marian Falls

Mirror Lakes

Ray, our tour guide, and Natalie

A very curious kea bird before Homer Tunnel

Falls in Milford Sound

Sunday - Milford Sound tour. Weather: Mainly cloudy, cool (finally need to wear pants, not shorts!)  Since all the big tour buses that come from Queenstown were full, we ended up getting booked on a local Te Anau tour bus, Fiordland Tours, which hooks up with Mitre Peak Cruises in Milford Sound.  We totally lucked out with this one, as Ray, our tour guide, was so knowledgeable and really cared about having us see all the photo stops on the way.  There were only 7 of us on his small bus, so no waiting for big groups to get one and off at each stop.  The group included 4 fun ladies from Queensland, Australia, who were old school buddies, and one Japanese girl who was a refugee tourist from Christchurch.  We must have made around 9 stops on the way to Milford, including Mirror Lakes, The Chasm falls, and  a coffee stop in Holyford Valley. 
Overall it was a fun tour, and we enjoyed the cruise of Milford Sound.  Again we lucked out as there were maybe 15 of us on the boat cruise, so everyone stayed up top to get the panoramic views of the fiords.  Highlights were definitely the falls, but unfortunately the day was pretty gloomy, so the fiords looked a bit desolate to us, and often in high cloud.

Kepler Track near Te Anau

Monday, Feb 28. Weather: Partly sunny in morning, cloudy afternoon.  Barry and I had a quieter day today, with not much planned in Te Anau. The forecast for the Fiordland National Park area was supposed to be socked in and rainy, so there was no point in doing the Key Summit hike, part of the multiday Routeburn Track.  The point of that hike is to get fantastic views of the area, and there would be no views in the bad weather.  So we did a short portion of the Kepler Track, in the beech forest along Te Anau.  Very pretty forest, but we noticed there were a lot of trees marked with signs that indicated traps nearby.  We started to spot the traps, which were likely for stoat or possums, regarded as major pests in New Zealand.  That's why you'll sometimes see possum fur combined with merino wool in clothing - make some use of the poor pests, I guess.  It's hard getting used to the unique problems they have here with introduced animal species that have wreaked havoc on ecosystems and native birds and animals.  Many of NZ's native birds have no natural predators, so they haven't evolved with any way to protect themselves from excellent predators like the stout (which was brought in to deal with the rabbit overpopulation originally).  And the possum is eating away at native trees.  So in a nutshell, now the Department of Conservation is trying to kill off the stoat and possum populations.

Visiting Mountain Lakes: Tekapo, Pukaki & Wanaka

Feb 23 - Feb 25:

It's been another busy week for us, with loads of driving and lots of pretty lake scenery! (And very little internet access). Here's a quick summary:

Lake Tekapo

Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo

Barry mistakes a horse tie-up for a ballet bar at Lake Tekapo-oops!

 On Wednesday, we visited Lake Tekapo en route to our 2 night stay in the small town of Twizel. Lake Tekapo is a beautiful icy blue colored lake, surrounded by mountain scenery and tussocky hillsides.
 Looking over the lakefront is the tiny Church of the Good Shepherd, built in 1935. We hiked to the summit of Mt. John, and returned via the lakeside, a hike of about 3 hours length.  We soaked up the views even though it was drizzling rain and cloudy, and slurped up delicious mochaccinos from the coffee shop at the top.  There is an astronomy observatory at the summit run by the Earth and Sky company http://www.newzealandsky.com/earthandsky/index.html
- something you can visit at night to look at the stars.  Interestingly, this was one of the few walks we've done in NZ that wasn't crowded on the trails - a nice change.
 

An overcast day looking into Hooker Valley

On Thursday, we drove past Lake Pukaki on our way to Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park.  Our plan was to hike the very popular Hooker Valley Trail, which takes you along the valley floor and gives you good views of Mt. Cook peak.  The day was mainly overcast and windy, and we started our hike mid morning.  The trail was very busy, it seemed there were hundreds of people walking this trail that day.  Again we felt like we were one of the few Canadians here - most of the visitors were either British, German, or Asian, and age-wise, we are not the common demographic. Most visitors we've come across are either 15-20 years older or younger than us.

A spiky Golden Spaniard plant

Tasman Glacier & Tasman Lake - see those icebergs!

Amazing view from Tasman Glacier lookout

Overall the trail was more of a walk than a hike - very few gains in elevation, and it's a one way track so you retrace your steps back.  I think this walk is overrated in terms of views and variety of scenery.  Maybe it was because of the high clouds concealing the peaks at times, or the crowds, but the highlight was probably seeing the glaciers clinging to the sides of Mount Sefton and Mount Cook.

The Visitor Centre in the village is worth a look - great history of the mountaineering in the area, including artefacts from times past including the wooden slats they used as skis and the changes in camera technology over the years.
Another stop worth visiting are the Blue Lakes from the Tasman Valley Road (8 km of gravel road off the Mount Cook Road).  A 20 minute hike up gives you fantastic views of the Tasman River Valley and the Tasman Glacier, the largest glacier in New Zealand.  The Tasman Lake below it is full of icebergs, and a huge chunk of the glacier actually broke off during the earthquake in Christchurch - causing some large waves and scaring the heck out of the boat passengers visiting the glacier at the time!   (No one was hurt, by the way.)

That night as we ate our pizza at an outdoor cafe in Twizel, a family of Canucks happened to site down beside us.  The friendly dad told us they were from Humboldt, Saskatchewan, and had traveled to NZ for a wedding.  They were in the CBD of Christchurch when the quake hit, and were lucky the parking garage their rental car was in didn't collapse.  They basically just jumped in their car and fled out of the city like everyone else and ended up in this area.
 

Barry and Nat at the Wanaka Lake Lookout

Friday we left Twizel and drove another hour to Lake Wanaka.  Who knew this was such a happenin' town?  We think maybe they're competing with Queenstown to be the tourist attraction of the area.  Here's where we started to see people with money to burn - big holiday homes, fancier restaurants, nice cars.  The lake front area is full of restaurants and people out for a stroll.   After enjoying a sloppy beef burger and yes, fries again, later in the afternoon we set out for a quick hike to the Diamond Lake loop.  After a bit of a grunt up, we were lucky to get some late day sun and some fantastic views of the surrounding mountains, towards Mount Aspiring National Park to the northwest, and south to Lake Wanaka.  We heard and saw lots of birds in the forest canopy.   Wish we'd had more time in Wanaka, there were other hikes to nearby summits that would provide excellent views of the area.
Oh well, next day we were off to Te Anau via Arrowtown.

More Furry Seals and Dolphins too!

Mon., Feb 21 & Tues. Feb 22nd Cont'd:

Those brown blobs are all seals!

Fur seal babies playing in surf pools

After we went sea kayaking and were fully recovered, later in the afternoon we drove back north along the highway to a spot where you can see even more seals and a nice waterfall.  The area is called Ohau Point, and from the highway lookout you can see hundreds of fur seals below on the rocks and in the surf.  This is an active breeding colony, so we could see males, females and baby seals interacting in a pretty crowded area.  Took some video footage here, but don't have enough upload time to get it on the blog.  Sorry!

 

Ohau Waterfall

We stopped a little further and visited the Ohau Waterfall, accessible via a short 10 minute walk in from the highway pull-off area. Again, you walk through beautiful lush forest which brings you to a really pretty waterfall and pool below.  It's almost mystical in here, and for once, there weren't crowds of people sharing the same trail with us!  The information on the signs informed us that the Ohau Stream up to the waterfall is used by baby fur seals for shelter in the winter time while their mothers are feeding at sea.

The next day, Tuesday, we departed Kaikoura for Christchurch.  About half an hour south of Kaikoura, I was scanning the ocean for signs of whales, and suddenly saw what looked like large fish leaping out of the ocean.  Luckily there was a turnoff shortly ahead and we pulled off with some other cars.  Sure enough, they weren't fish - they appeared to be Hector's dolphins, a smaller dolphin found in this part of the world.  There were several large pods visible offshore, and with the help of the binoculars, we could see groups of them jumping and flipping over the water.  We watched them for 15 or 20 minutes or so, then moved on.  In a way, these dolphins delayed us from reaching downtown Christchurch for the earthquake, so thank you to the dolphins for being a distraction!!

Kayaking in Kaikoura

NZ fur seal relaxing on the rocks in Kaikoura

Monday, Feb. 21: If you're into marine wildlife viewing, Kaikoura is the place to be.  And to boot, it has dramatic surf and coastlines and mountain landscapes surrounding it.  Some of your choices for adventure in Kaikoura include: whale watching, dolphin watching/swimming; albatross watching; seal swimming and sea kayaking; and hiking.

This was a second location I could have gone swimming with dolphins, but alas, it was not meant to be. On Sunday afternoon when we enquired with Dolphin Encounters, they were fully booked for Monday except for 5:30am, and those that know me, know that would be impossible.  So, we did some more research, put ourselves on a waitlist for whale watching Monday morning, and by Monday morning, we decided whale watching was overpriced for seeing a couple whales ($145 NZD). There was also a good chance the boat could be rocky, not so great for Barry and potential seasickness. So...we went with sea kayaking to see some seals up close and personal with Kaikoura Kayaks.