New Zealand: Day 19
January 21, 2013
The sky was bright and clear when I awoke this morning, with temperatures in the low 70s. As the day progressed, temperatures rose only slightly to the mid-70s, and only a few wisps of clouds appeared.
After three days in Queenstown, this day was primarily to be one of transit to our next stop: Milford Sound. Before leaving Queenstown I had one remaining item of business to take care of, and that was my photos and videos of the whitewater rafting trip of two days ago. Unfortunately, I overslept, and I was awakened by our driver knocking at my door at 8:00 to ask if my bags were ready for loading on the coach. Fortunately, they were because I had packed them the night before, but I had only half an hour to get ready, get dressed, dash down to the whitewater rafting offices, and then back to the hotel. The "run" was not an easy one because my lungs still were not recovered from the illness of the past several days. To my great relief, the staff member at the whitewater rafting office with whom I had been speaking over the previous two days finally came through, and the photos and digital copies were ready when I arrived. I guess my two raised eyebrows had the desired effect!
We stopped for lunch in Te Anau (TAY an now), located near the beginning of Fiordland National Park. Rather than eat, I walked down to the waterfront of Lake Te Anau so I could get some good photographs of the snow-capped mountains on the other side of the lake. It was a good walk, and I got some much needed exercise.
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We headed further into Fiordland National Park, and the scenery is quite spectacular. I was pleased that our coach driver made several "photo op" stops along the way, but if I had been driving a vehicle on my own, I would have made many more stops. The scenery was that magnificent. I wondered to what degree it resembled what we had missed in Buller Gorge a few days ago.
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One of my favorite stops was the Mirror Lakes which, as their names suggest, form mirrors of the mountain ranges behind them. I will need to revisit this location because even with my widest angle lens I was not able to capture both the mountain rainge and its mirror image.
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In fact, today's post is going to be shorter than some of the others because, again, I am going to let the pictures speak the thousands of words far better than I could.
Our driver pointed out a few examples of an interesting phenomena known as a "tree avalanche". The sheer stone walls of the canyons were covered with mosses, lichen and ferns, but occasionally a seed of a tree would make its way into the vegetation and begin to grow among the more primitive flora. Eventually, however, the tree would grow to such a size that it no longer could be supported by the rock walls; the root structure among the mosses and ferns would not be sufficient. Gravity would assert its force, and a tree avalanche would occur, with the tree falling the to bottom of the ravine, taking all of the vegetation in its path with it.
We arrived in Milford Sound in mid-afternoon and boarded the Milford Mariner which was to be our home for the evening. I had seen a great number of photographs of Milford Sound, and I had said I wanted the day to be like like the one in the post cards. My wish was granted more or less: only a slight haze pervaded the Sound. I am hopeful I was able to take some very good photographs. The Sound is a photographer's dream, and I took over a hundred photographs during our brief stay there. The Sound is marked by numerous waterfalls, and our ship would get close enough to a couple that we were able to see the rainbows created by the mists formed at the bases of the waterfalls.
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I was able to cross another item off my bucket list: kayaking. After the Milford Mariner docked in the Sound for the evening, passengers were afforded the opportunity to go swimming (not in 40 degree F water for me, thanks), or kayaking. It was modestly entertaining. Unfortunately skirts were not available, so I was thoroughly soaked by water dripping off the action of the paddles. As I expected, my arms quickly tired from the activity, the very reason I had avoided kayaking for so long, so I paddled around for about 20 minutes and then returned to the ship. This made some fellow passengers happy because as there were more who wanted to go kayaking than there were available kayaks, a queue had formed waiting for tiring kayakers such as myself.
It was not just the tiring arms that brought me back to the ship. The day was waning, reaching the Golden Hours when the light is best, and I had a noticed while kayaking some very photo worthy scenes of rays of sun passing through some of the breaks between the islands in the Sound. An example of my efforts is below.
Dinner was surprisingly good; I had not expected much from the small ship, but the buffet was a delight for a vegetarian. The carnivores reported satisfaction as well. By the time dinner was over, I was exhausted, so I elected to forego the nature and geophysics talk given by members of the crew. I fell asleep even before I was able to complete my notes for the day. No matter because no Internet service was available aboard the ship. Was I supposed to go an entire day without being able to check my email? The horror, the horror!
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Last revised: August 27, 2015.
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