Last night was sadly our last night in New Zealand. Our flight to Sydney is not until 4pm, so we spent the morning exploring around Christchurch. Despite the devastation wreaked by the earthquakes and aftershocks, this is a vibrant city which is re-building itself in an interesting and innovative way. We spent a lot of the morning wandering around the museum. It had...
In the interests of experiencing everything about New Zealand, I managed on the drive from Mount Cook to Christchurch to meet the Kiwi police. As with everyone here, they were very friendly, even when issuing me with a speeding ticket! The rest of the journey went quite slowly …… We arrived in Christchurch about lunchtime and once we had checked in...
Icebergs …. Turns out you don’t have to go to Antarctica to see them, you can see them in Mount Cook National Park. The process of ice parting company with the glacier is called calving and this happens naturally all the time. These icebergs can remain in the glacial lakes for some time as they slowly melt. The walk we did this morning was along a path...
We are now coming close to finishing our loop of South Island, but before we head back to Christchurch, we are making a slight detour to Mount Cook Village in the Southern Alps. The village is in the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. This was established in 1953 and along with Westland National Park, Mount Aspiring National Park and Fiordland National Park forms one...
Sadly it was time to leave Te Anau this morning. we have been here four days and got to know the town well. With trips to Doubtful Sound, Milford Sound and a drive to the south coast, we have made the most of the area, but it is time to move on. So, today was mainly just a drive to Cromwell. However, on the way we made a stop for coffee at Arrowtown. In 1862 gold was...
The Maori name for Milford Sound is Piopiotahi. This seems a distinct improvement on the original name which was given by Captain John Grono who discovered it in 1812. He named it Milford Haven after his homeland in Wales. This was later changed to Milford Sound by Captain John Lort Stokes who travelled on HMS Beagle, but even this is wrong as it is a fiord! It is a...
The forecast today was not a classic one – once again it was one of the 200 rain days they get down here, so we decided to go for a drive. On the recommendation of the B&B hosts, we took the southern scenic route towards Invercargill. The first stop on the way down was at a crossing over the Waiau River called the Clifden Suspension Bridge. Bizarrely it...
Fiordland is by far the largest of New Zealand’s fourteen national parks at 4,868 square miles. It is also by far the most inaccessible. It occupies the whole south western corner of New Zealand and there is just one main road that goes into the park. That is the Milford Road (SH 94). This reached the Homer Tunnel area in 1935, but it wasn’t until the...
Today we went to see fungus gnats. This may not, on the face of it sound like a scintillating day, but … if I described them as glowworms, then it might sound more appealing. Actually glowworms are the larval stage of the fungus gnat. They are more accurately known as Arachnocampa. They have a bioluminescent larval stage and are endemic to Australia and New...
Te Anau is our next destination and is often considered the walking capital of New Zealand. Many of the iconic walking tracks – the Kepler Track, the Milford Track and the Routeburn Track. However, given that these take anything between three and five days to do, there is no danger of us being found on them. We do, however, have four days in Te Anau, so we...