Autumn arrives and NZ Part 3

Storms arrived early this year, where October is normally a beautiful month, this year it's done nothing but rain. Despite this there is some lovely autumn colours throughout the Olive Groves where we go biking if you care to look for it.

This autumn it has also been diffucult to get still enough weather to get the sails out and dry them before taking them off the boats, but finally a couple days ago we had a lovely day.

A single Pelican arrives back for the winter, he looking around for his mates but they're nowhere to be found. Looks like the Flamingos have also gone elsewhere for the winter this year, we have only seen them flying over, not one on the lagoon.

The rest of the autumn piccies here




NZ Part 3 Milford Sound and Queenstown

May 22nd - we left Te Anau mid morning to drive along the only road in and out of Milford Sound. It winds up and up through the dramatic Southern Alps until it reaches the 1.2km Homer Tunnel. This tunnel was initially started with men using pick axes and wheelbarrows then dynamited through the mountain side to gain road access to the Sound. In the tunnel you won’t see any shoring up, no concrete just hewn granite. About 2 meters up from the bottom it’s painted white and there are small lights showing the way. Once in the tunnel it’s all downhill into the valley leading to the Sound. It’s an experience in itself.

Homer Tunnel

Milford Sound was named by a sealer Captain John Grono, after his home Milford Haven in Wales. It’s in the South West corner of NZ and is known as the wettest inhabited place in NZ, with 6,813 mm of rain a year. It is technically a Fjord and opens out to the Tasman Sea, but has retained it’s original name of Sound. It was also described as the 8th wonder of the world by Rudyard Kipling. The Maori call it ‘Piopiotahi’ after a Thrush like bird.

None of that though, prepares you for the stunning beauty of the place. It’s very very difficult to take in the breathtaking scale of the landscape in the Sound, with sheer rock faces rising 1,200 meters or more on either side and waterfalls falling a thousand meters in length. Lush rain forests cling precariously to the cliffs and the wind blows so hard through the sound at times that the waterfalls are blown back up the mountains.

Milford Sound

Dolphins play around the boats, seals and penguins make their homes on the rocky shores and if you’re lucky the odd whale is spotted.

The trip out to the sea and back normally takes about an hour and a half. The time depends on how far you can actually get out to the sea, in rough conditions the boats don’t get far enough out to even see the sea, luckily for us it was a calm day and we went far enough out into the Tasman to get a view of the entrance of the Sound as seen by the early explorers. It is in fact almost impossible to tell there is an entrance at all!! It was a very frightened captain and crew that were blown into the Sound in a storm and realised as they got closer the land opened up and eventually far enough into the Sound they found shelter.

The observatory has only just opened this year and is a very clever piece of engineering and a great idea. Due to the high rainfall in the Sound the salt water is covered with a layer of fresh water. Combine this with the narrow shape of the Sound, light is prevented from penetrating past the fresh water, creating a similar environment to the deep ocean at the much shallower depth. The Observatory is floating with fixtures to the shore and a lower circular viewing level at 10 meters down. Outside each of the viewing windows is a marine shelf, where plant life has attracted a variety of fish, starfish and octopus.

Fish at Observatory

The shelves are movable so when there is heavy freshwater influx the shelves are lowered to ensure the marine life remain in the right seawater levels. It’s unique in that the people are contained and the fish are free to come and go. The hour we were there seemed to pass in a flash. When we left the Marine Centre the weather had closed right in and it was raining, the photo here looks like it was taken in black and white, it was in fact taken in colour!

May 23rd, after another night spent in Te Anau we drive up to Queenstown, the last time I was there was 1976, I couldn’t recognise the place. It’s also seriously expensive there now. NZ wine is cheaper in the UK than it was in Queenstown. Having said all that it’s still a stunning place. We went up in the Gondola to temperatures of 2° and nearly got blown off our feet, the weather is obviously changing from the long summer and warm autumn they’ve had to full blown winter.

Once at the top (790m above the town) it is spectacular with 220 degree panaramic views of Lake Wakatipu, The Remarkables and Coronet Peak.

View going up the Gondola

This is the type of Gondola I went up in 1976!!

This is the home of most of the extreme sports that have come out of NZ. As Mark puts it, they’re not happy unless they’re trying to throw themselves off something in an attempt to die!!

That afternoon we went out to the Shotover River to have a trip on the Shotover Jet boat. Shotover River was one of the richest gold mining areas in the late 1800’s and in modern times NZ is the home of the development of the Jet boat and these boats will run in 10cm of water. I had bought Mark this as a surprise, but the ride is not for the faint hearted. It’s one of those rides that you’re not sure if your legs will hold you up when you get off. They warn all passengers that the wind chill can reach -30° in the boat so if I look like I had a lot of clothes on in the picky below you’re right – it was COLD!

We stayed in Queenstown for the night and during our wander around the town we went into a liquor store for a bottle of wine and found the lad on the till was from Pickering!! He had been there 3 years and had got a bit trapped, the wages were poor and it was an expensive place to live, he had trouble saving enough to move on – seems it’s a common problem for people arriving in the Mecca of extreme sports capital of the world.

All the pictures here of Milford, Queenstown and Shotover River