Where are Ron and Ellen?
New Zealand (Ron and Ellen), Fiji (Ron), 5 January - 9 March 2015
Ellen and Ron near Milford Sound, NZ, January 2015
New Zealand, South Island, part 1
To see photos of the Otago Peninsula and Royal Albatros Center, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of Te Anau, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of the drive between Te Anau and Milford Sound, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of Milford Sound, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Albatrosses and kea and penguins and sheep
To see photos of Queensland and Lake Wanaka, click on the thumbnail at the left.
18 January 2015
Haast Junction, New ZealandWe arrived this afternoon in Haast, on the west coast of the Southern Island where the Haast River empties into the Tasman Sea. The total population of Haast Junction, Haast Beach, and Haast Village combined can’t be more than several hundred. No cell phone coverage, no ATM - two gas stations, several places to stay, several restaurants - a base for people doing hikes in the nearby coastal rainforest area and national park. It is cloudy and misty - the drive here from Queenstown alternated between sun and clouds and mist and rain.
We arrived in Christchurch last Monday, picked up our rental car, and headed south to Timaru, a small town on the east coast about 2.5 hours south of Christchurch. It was a good drive to get used to the rental car and to driving on the left, flat road across a huge coastal plain, occasional small towns, very little traffic. We stopped in one small town to get a few groceries - granola and yogurt for breakfast, tea bags, a lemon, some apples, some cookies. Our hotel in Timaru was a Victorian hotel, recently refurbished, with a nice room overlooking the port (big container boats, busy cranes, etc). After arriving and making tea (electric kettle, mugs, tea bags, and sugar have been supplied every place we’ve stayed so far), we set out to walk around the town a bit - putting on our coats to do so, as it was cloudy and much, much colder than it had been in Auckland. It was 5:30 on a Monday evening, and almost everything on the main street was closed, with very few people around. Was this because it was cold, or is that normal? We don’t know. We walked through a big park, with lovely rose gardens, and a little carnival that is there only in January, but it also was shut up tight - so maybe it was the weather? We found a Thai restaurant and had an excellent dinner there before heading back to our room.
On Tuesday we headed onward to Dunedin, about 3.5 hours south, also on the coast. The first part of the drive was still the flat plain, but then it gradually became more and more hilly, and we began to see the famous New Zealand sheep - fields and fields of sheep, hundreds and thousands of sheep. From time to time we also passed fields of cattle, again hundreds of them in a relatively small area, but everywhere they were, the grass was very green, so we assume they must get moved regularly from one field to another. We had our picnic lunch at a little turnoff (there are picnic spots marked all along the roadways) that took us right to a long deserted beach. After lunch we made a detour out to a nature reserve area marked on our road atlas (we bought a wonderful road atlas in Auckland), and were rewarded with a lovely promontory and seals basking in the sun on the rocks just offshore.
In Dunedin we had an apartment in a beach area for two nights, not beach front because there are huge dunes, but easy walk. The coast reminded us of parts of Oregon, with headlands and bluffs and beaches in between - and we are guessing the water is just as cold, since people were on the beach in sweatshirts and only the surfers in wetsuits were in the water.
Our primary reason for going to Dunedin was to visit the Otago Peninsula, which has a high central ridge dropping down to the water. At the tip of the peninsula on Taiaroa Head is the Royal Albatross Center, which has the world’s only mainland royal albatross colony. Between December and February they are nesting, so one parent is always on the nest or guarding the young. We took the excellent tour, which allowed us to go out to the observation area where we could see 5 nesting sites (more are on the headland, but only these 5 in view of the observation area). The albatrosses look like large sea gulls, until you see one flying - their wing span is 3 meters (about 10 feet). We were lucky enough to actually see one flying (they are gliders, and generally like more wind than there was that day), and it was quite impressive. They spend most of their life at sea, except for nesting. In the area there are also nesting colonies of red-billed gulls (with fuzzy grey spotted babies) and of Stewart Island shags. Little blue penguins swim ashore at dusk to go to their nests in the dunes (dusk being about 9:30 pm, we didn’t stay for that!), but in a cove off one of the cliff-side observation decks we saw one penguin swimming around in the water - and more seals on the rocks at the base of the cliffs. We went out to the Center via the main road that hugs the coast, and came back using a set of gravel roads - spectacular views and vistas, many sheep, almost no other cars.
Thursday we headed west to Te Anau, a town on a lake surrounded by rugged mountains. Spectacular drive - sweeping vistas, fields and fields of sheep. Our hotel was on a hill overlooking the lake and the mountains on the other side. We walked along the lakeside path before dinner - a wonderful seafood chowder for both of us.
Friday was our big trip to Milford Sound for the 2 hour boat ride on the fiord - a 2 hour drive each way - more if you stop at as many pull-overs as we did. Te Anau is the closest place to Milford Sound - what is between the two is Fiordlands National Park, no towns, no restaurants, no gas stations - stock up before you set out! The terrain quickly becomes very mountainous, steep ups and downs, hairpin turns, steep drop-offs on the edge of the road, occasional stopping points for vistas and waterfalls. The area is home to the kea, a unique NZ parrot, about 10-12 inches tall, and they hang around the parking lots hoping for food handouts. There are signs everywhere saying not to feed them (bad for them), and remarkably, we didn’t see anyone doing so. Several of the main NZ long distance walking trails start/end at a point about two thirds along to Milford Sound, and there are lots of young people hitch-hiking one direction or the other. We picked up a young German woman, 24 years old, from Berlin, who had been working in NZ for the last several months after 9 months studying in Australia, and was having a final 2 weeks traveling around NZ before heading home. We took her to Milford Sound, where she was on the same boat tour we were, and then, because the camp sites at Milford Sound were all full, we took her back to the campsite just outside Te Anau where she’d camped the night before.
The boat trip was spectacular - sheer rocky cliffs with trees clinging to them rising a couple thousand feet out of the water. The average yearly rainfall of 7 meters (!) means that everywhere you look there are waterfalls cascading down the steep sides to the water.
Saturday we left Te Anau and headed for Queenstown, again, another spectacular drive. Mountains! Lakes! (and sheep, of course). After reading about Queenstown, we decided we would rather stay in Wanaka, a bit further on, a much smaller town but also on a lake. However, after much calling around, we were repeatedly told there were no rooms available there that night, so we stayed in Queenstown instead. Queenstown is on the shore of a huge long lake shaped like a thunderbolt, with the town at the angled center point. It is the place where the Remarkables (yes, that is actually the name of the mountain range, and it fits perfectly) meet the lake. We had a nice walk in the huge Queenstown Gardens, a park laid out by the Victorians on a finger of land jutting out into the lake. It includes walking paths, rose garden, bowling green, tennis courts, skating rink - and a Frisbee golf course. The afternoon was extremely windy, and as we were finishing our walk at the end of the afternoon the temperature dropped quite a bit and it began to rain. We ate dinner in the central part of town, and by the time we walked back to our hotel the rain had let up enough that we didn’t get too wet.
Today we left Queenstown and drove another mountainous and spectacular route to Wanaka and then on to Haast. When we went through Wanaka, we stopped for a while and watched the ending of a big triathlon that was going on - the running course began and ended along the lake front, with people coming in on their bikes and beginning and ending their run. Now we know why there were no rooms available in Wanaka last night!
And since I began writing this, it has changed from misting outside to steady hard rain and wind. We hope for better weather tomorrow when we head for Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers!
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
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Last updated: 5 February 2015
