Archive for January, 2011

This photo was taken on one of the first “Trig” hikes we ever took. Trigs are little pyramids that New Zealanders put atop their hills so they can tell how far stuff is. I know, weird. But I guess it could work. Hazel is imitating the tree in the background in this photo.

Hazel discovered a gigantic cave at the top of one of our hill climbs. It was filled with stalactites! WoHoo! How far down can you go?!?

This is a sweet pic of the river that flows out from under a glacier. Makes sense, eh?

This is from one of the most beautiful alpine tracks we’ve walked on. A rickety bridge starts it off.

A WC Hut in the middle of the track.

A bright blue stream from glacial runoff in the middle of the track.


The lake at the bottom of the Hooker Glacier, a little less dramatic than Franz Josef. But it had its own serenity.

Here’s what we were outfitted in before we went up to a summit to view stars. Not pictured are our socks-and-sandals.

This was a really remarkable hike starting at the Divide on the way to Milford Sound. We got to the top of the mountain, and here is the proof!

Obligatory “On a Boat” picture

This shows just how alone one can feel out in the boondocks of Fiordland. This picture looks out on the Tasman Sea.

When we were about to start fishing, we were greeted by the friendly neighborhood ALBATROSS! So huge! The picture doesn’t do it justice but it must’ve had an 8 foot wingspan.

Finally. Hazel, after only 5 minutes of fishing in Proper Conditions catches her first fish, a Sea Perch. She was made to kiss it by our friendly captain Fiord — who said we wouldn’t get off the boat until Hazel caught her first fish. Luckily it was a good day!

This was huge. And amazing. And scary. Basically Andre was a hero.

Since we hadn’t had enough of her first fish, we got it out of the “to be dinner” bucket and photographed it again :)





These photos reflect the beauty of the Sounds at sunset. Also how grateful we were to finally crawl into bed after seeing dolphins, pulling up lobster pots, fishing, kayaking, and eating. Did I mention eating?


The infamous Morning After. This one wasn’t so bad!



These photos represent our initial experience of Tongariro — a steep hike up rocky volcanic ground, only to cross a huge, barren crater.

Then we found out what a real crater looks like.

The Red crater was also the highest altitude we attained on the Crossing, a whopping 1886 meters high!

This is the icing on the cake, after peaking Red Crater you get to lope down loose soil to see the beautiful Emerald Lakes.

We had gale-force winds up at the top, and were worried about falling into a crater almost the whole time!

Here’s the view at the end of the Crossing — serene and pastoral. Mission Accomplished.

Hope you liked my Best Of – this is a great selection from the photos I’ve taken so far!

 

It has been a while since I’ve managed an update.  We’ve had a busy and amazing time recently and have been very, very lucky.

Since the last post we took the southern scenic route around the bottom of the South Island.  This took us through the Catlans region and then up into Fiordland.  All in all we’ve had pretty good weather (except at Milford Sound), so we’ve been able to do some really good hikes and see lots of incredible scenery!

We saw more penguins, did a beautiful river walk and met some incredibly nice people who shared their campfire one night.  There are loads of waterfalls in the Catlans, so I had a chance to practice taking some waterfall photos.

We had a huge adventure getting to Milford Sound as we realized part-way that we would not have enough gas in our tiny tank to make it back if we went all the way to the Sound.  There is no gas anywhere along the route, so running out would be pretty annoying, as would turning back and not seeing it.  We found ourselves at a hut where a few of the hikes start and managed to talk our way onto a bus that was passing through.  It ended up being really good because the road was incredibly scenic (despite the rain) and we both got to enjoy it instead of having to think about the very windy road.  It also ended up giving us only about 1.5 hours at the sound, but we didn’t mind that because we were saving our boat trip for Doubtful Sound and it was really poor visability.  We paid the bus driver and he told us “this never happened” and we went on our way.

The road to Milford is just incredible, with waterfalls everywhere and the steepest cliffs – highly recommend a whole day just to explore that road.

The next day we did a hike up to Key Summit (still before getting gas) and got some incredible views of the valleys and mountains.  I’m not going to have time to get pictures up, but I really will try in the next few days!

Our boat trip to Doubtful Sound was absolutely AWESOME!  We went with Fiordland Expeditions and it totally exceeded anything I had imagined.

We had all the lobster and blue cod we could eat.  Which it turns out is quite a lot!  We also got to catch both of these things and they were cooked fresh right there on the boat.  I caught not only my first fish, but three more as well!  We actually went all the way out to the Tasman Sea for fishing and it was totally unreal (unreel?) how easy it was to hook a fish.  Except for the guy who caught a 5 foot shark!  Absolutely incredible!

We also went kayaking, did a little stargazing and Justin jumped off the ship’s helicopter pad.  I jumped off something a little lower, but it was awesome that we had such perfect weather that we could swim.  Everyone kept saying that they hardly ever have that much sun there.

But that wasn’t even the end of the seafood.  The kind people who shared their campfire invited us to their beautiful home to try Paua (abalone!).  So straight off the boat we drove back across the country and had another amazing seafood feast and wonderful evening of conversation (and showers and laundry!) at their house.  Much to my surprise I really liked the Paua and ate both strips of it and ground up patties. It’s a pretty off-putting black and blue color on the outside, but it tastes delicious!  We also had fish and chips style blue cod.  It’s amazing how generous people are as we would never have been able to try Paua like that.  Chris knows how and where to dive for them and snatched them that same day off the rocks!  You aren’t allowed to tank dive to get them, so it takes quite a bit of know-how.  We’re hoping that one day we’ll be able to return the favor, but we were having trouble thinking of truly American food besides hot dogs and twinkies.

My internet time is almost run out, even though I could go on and on about the last week.  We’re on our way back to the North Island now and going into intensive Spanish practice mode to get ready for South America at the end of the month.

 Then we went out to the lighthouse at Moeraki where they have a hide set up (complete with binoculars!) and watched the penguins coming back from their day of fishing.  They were Yellow-Eyed Penguins which are quite rare and endangered, and we were lucky enough to spot 4 of them in about 45 minutes!  So cool to watch them hop the rocks and waddle up to their nests on land.

 In Dunedin today.  Heading down to the Catlans tomorrow.