Posts Tagged ‘Scenery’

Catlans Penguin Beach with Hide

More Yellow-Eyed Penguins!

 

Beautiful Catlans Beaches

No Camping!

Milford Sound in the drizzle

Views from Key Summit hike at Milford

More from Key Summit

Even more Key Summit

Doubtful Sound on the way to the boat

Our swanky cabin

Albatross!

Where I caught my first fish

View from the boat where we spent the night

Views in the morning from the cruise

Justin on a Moeraki Boulder

 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.

Yellow-Eyed Penguin

 In Dunedin today.  Heading down to the Catlans tomorrow.

Christmas Eve at the Octagon

We’ve had a pretty busy time of it, and as always my internet time is running out, but I’ll hit the highlights.  We had a wonderful Christmas in Christchurch with a delicious dinner out on Christmas Eve at a restaurant with live music and then went to the late night Christmas service at the Cathedral.

Christmas Eve at Christchurch Cathedral

Christmas Day we went for a punt ride (they don’t let you punt your own because the current is very fast) and got to see the city from the Avon, which runs right through the middle.  Really nice!  Then we had BBQ lamb.  In New Zealand many people do BBQ for Christmas dinner because it’s so nice outside.

The next day we set off for the Banks Peninsula and had an incredibly gorgeous drive.  The weather was perfect and the views were amazing.

Birds are everywhere!

Banks Peninsula Views

Unfortunately, the next day the weather took a turn for the worse and it started absolutely pouring.  The views were still good when we could see them, but the clouds were so low that there wasn’t much to see.  We tried to make the most of any breaks in the rain, but didn’t feel like we saw the best of Lake Tekapo.

Very BLUE Lake Tekapo in the rain

Horse in wildflowers

The RAIN

The next day it was still pouring, but we decided to head up to Mt. Cook with the hope that the weather forecast was accurate and the rain would break.  It wasn’t promising.

More RAIN

We did a hike, and got sopping wet, attempted another and had to turn back because of flooding.  All of the trails were underwater and so was most of the campground.  We hunkered down with books, and I didn’t even realize that the weather was changing.  Luckily, Justin was on the watch and we quickly did a repeat of the first walk we had tried.  You can see the difference above and below!

Same view 4 hours later!

Mt. Cook is FABULOUS.  The campground was really good, the mountain is so, so beautiful and we had a really good hike this morning (if somewhat crowded – one of the busiest places we’ve been in New Zealand).

Mt. Cook

This afternoon we headed back to Lake Tekapo and are enjoying the continuing sun.  At midnight tonight we’re going on an observatory tour where we will get to use university telescopes and find out about the Southern Hemisphere sky – so we’re extra happy that the skies are clear!

So beautiful now the sun is out!

It’s much more challenging than I had thought it would be to upload photos from the road.  Getting a couple of days worth of photos up can take 4-5 hours on slow internet connections and it’s expensive to have that much time on the web.  So I’m going to have to switch to uploading highlights to the blog and getting albums up much more slowly.

Here are a few from our jetboat/geothermal expedition.

Jet boats are awesome!

You had to stay on the walkways because the ground is so unstable

And here’s one of the view from Mt. Victoria – in Wellington.

View of Wellington

After our very pleasant day in Wellington we got the ferry to the south island.  It was a smooth ride (apparently it can sometimes be very rough) and we got some really pretty views coming into the south island.

First Views of South Island

So far, the south island has been wonderful.  We spent two nights in a very nice campsite (with hot showers!) and have done several hikes.  The scenery is incredible.

Justin views the scenery

Golden Bay Beach

The roads here are generally much slower than roads in the USA because they were built to go with the land.  And the land is very dramatic!  They range from this:

Gravel

To this:

Nice, but Windy Road

Ok, sometimes they are straight – but it was definitely optimism, not reality that caused them to make the top speed on our van 160 km/hour!

Tonight we’re in Blenheim after an awesome tour of the Marlborough wine country.  We went for the posh route on this one and had a van pick us up at our campsite and take us to the wineries.  Much, much, much cheaper than this type of thing in the USA and worth every penny since we got to taste lots of delicious wines.

On Wednesday my mom flew down from Seattle to spend some time with us before we leave.  Since she’s always wanted to see Yosemite, I hatched a plan for us to go out there for a night.  We had an awesome time hiking and seeing the sights, and now I have some actual travel to blog about.  It was very special for me to go back to Yosemite, because almost exactly a year ago Justin proposed to me there.

She got into the San Jose airport (after a minor delay) in the middle of the day and we headed straight to the park.  The drive was fairly uneventful, although there was some crazy smoke/smog/fog around Merced.  It was like driving with really dirty windows.  It disappeared once we got into the mountains though and we managed to make it to the park just after sunset.

Half Dome at Sunset as we Arrived

We stayed in a heated tent cabin in the Curry Village Campground and even though it got down to about 27 degrees Fahrenheit we were fairly warm and comfy all night.

Mom at the Pizza Place for Dinner

Me Excited with the Map

Inside our Cosy Tent Cabin

Reviews online were pretty mixed about this campground – apparently, it can be noisy, spiders have been sighted, and the blankets are wool so they are itchy.  We really liked it.  It’s right next to Half Dome, has hot water, heaters, and the beds were pretty comfortable.  It also has a handy bear locker right outside your tent so you can keep all your food from being stolen by a bear.  Apparently bears are a pretty huge problem as they break into cars and tents to get at the people food.  We didn’t see one though.

Our Cute Cabin

We were up with the sun at about 6 a.m. and started out on a hike right away.  The first stop was Mirror Lake and we got some sweet views along the way.  You can click on any of these pictures for a bigger version.

Yosemite Falls at Sunrise

Frozen Meadow with Fall Colors

Exploring the Trails

It was very, very cold, but very, very beautiful.  This was my first chance to check out how my trip clothes would perform in really cold weather and I’m glad to say, it went very well.  I brought an extra scarf and mittens, but aside from that I got by just with layering things from my backpack.  Good to know that I can be ok hiking at those kinds of temperatures with the clothes I’m planning on bringing!

Reflections in Mirror Lake

Around 10 a.m. we were starving so we splurged and had the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at the Ahwahnee Hotel.  So yummy and I definitely ate too much.  But after several cups of coffee and at least 5 pieces of bacon I was ready to hike again!

We checked out the gift shop:

Dancing bear?!

And the Visitors’ Center (this had some really good exhibits):

Cute!

And then headed to the waterfalls.

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls

According to the Visitors’ Center these are the highest falls in the U.S.  and are usually dried up at this time of year.  We were lucky to have awesome views of them and I spent a lot of time taking pictures.  In fact, most of the rest of the day was spent hiking around this area and snapping photos of the incredible views.  It’s really hard to decide which ones to post since I got a lot of good shots.  Hopefully in a day or two we will have worked out how to get photo galleries up and then I can post them all and not clutter up my blog posts as much.  But, because I like them, here are a few more of my Yosemite shots:

Upper Yosemite Falls

Beautiful Fall Leaves

Squirrel!

Half Dome

El Capitan

I’ll try to put the rest up in a gallery soon.  Today is a frantic getasmuchworkdoneonthehouseaspossible day, so I’d better get to it.