Hey All,
Well since we last posted, our travels have taken us to Queenstown, our last stop on the south island before a flight to Auckland, one night there and then the long flight home. I believe we left off at slope point in the last blog, the southernmost point of the south island. Well from Slope Point and Invercargill, we drove on to a small town called Bluff. This is where the ferry terminal from the mainland out to Stewart Island is located. We stayed at a very charming B&B called the Lazy Fish for one night in Bluff and then caught the early ferry to Stewart Island. If I never see another ferry again it will be too soon after that. The straight between the island and the mainland was ROUGH there was a prevailing south-westerly the morning we sailed and OH MY GOD it was BAD. The ferry is reasonably small, I'm guessing about 40 ft long, and its a cat style boat that travels, according to the skipper, about 23 knots. Unfortunately the wind was probably faster than that and the swells were HUGE. I was so sick I didn't get scared, I kind of vaguely noticed that as I was looking out the window desperate to try to find the horizon all I could see was water.... Dark, black blue water with white crests taller than the boat... and then I was too busy scrambling for the puke bag to notice anything. Miles told me later (on solid blissfully still land) that people seemed to be pretty scared and some looked terrified of the waves. I wasn't scared, I just wanted to get the hell off that damn boat!!! Unfortunately i remained pretty sick and shakey for the rest of the day and pretty much just slept. So a bit of a wasted day there, but when we woke in the morning I felt better, so we had breakfast and then decided we would do a couple of short walks before we had to catch (gulp) the ferry back.
We were headed to a short circuit of one peninsula when we passed a house on a corner and there was this older guy showing a german couple this strange contraption that looked like a tent hung between a couple of trees. (Now if you know Miles at all, unusual or unique things intrigue him to no end, so before our trip here he had spent weeks researching this contraption called the Hennesey Hammock. Basically a tent-hammock invented by this Canadian guy named Tom Hennessey. Its a pretty neat idea actually) Naturally, where I would have gone "huh, neat" and kept going, Miles is like "sweet" and walks over. The old guy turns to him and says "Hey, any idea what this is?" and Miles is like "yeah its a Hennessey Hammock" the guy laughs offers his hand and says "I'm Tom Hennessey" So for the next half hour, Tom and Miles talk about the design, how it works, what works well and what needs improving, and then Tom asks where we're headed for the day and convinces us that the best walk to do is a two hour trek out to Maori Beach, and lo and behold he knows a lady who will give us a ride to the trail head and here let him call her for us and why don't we come in for a cup of tea and meet his wife... Long story short we joined him and his wife for tea and a few stories, he spends summers in BC on one of the islands in the straight and winters in NZ on Stewart Island. He flagged us down a ride to the trail head, (litterally hollered and waved down a passing tour vehicle one of his friends drives) assured us we would be back in good time to make our ferry (damn...) and sent us one our way to see the scenery of Stewart Island. In retrospect, we totally got hijacked lol but it was a very beautiful hike, so I"m glad we did.
The ferry back was bad too, not as bad as the one out to the island, I didn't lose everything I'd eaten this time, but still felt ill. We drove back to Invercargill to spend the night and in the morning we headed up to Te Anau. On the way to Te Anau we stopped at Gemstone Beach. The water there is VIOLENT the waves are never ending and they just pound the shore to no end. They deposit stones on the beach, some considered valuable by ancient maori to use to make tools and adornments, and others still considered valuable such as sapphires and I think it was emeralds. We searched the stones, but all we found were some pretty stones. nuts eh? Of course, as my mom can attest, stones are just as good for me, I"m sure she still finds little caches of my "rock collection" around. So between Miles and me we filled my pockets with pretty stones. There was a couple of older men there who had a sluice set up and were looking for gold. Apparently since the price of gold went up again, they can make about $400 a day just mucking around in the sand. Not too shabby for a hobby is it?
We continued up the road towards Te anau stopping at a few other sights along the way. We stopped to check out this old bridge and were greeted by the ugliest pig I've seen. It really wanted Miles Apricot but he is pretty protective of his apricots, so the piggy went away dissappointed. We reached Te Anau and stayed in a holiday park there. For the rest of that day I was pretty much down for the count. I was still feeling off from our lovely ferry experience. So I stayed in bed and slept it off. On the next day, which would have been the... 27th of February I think, we drove out to Milford Sound and did a cruise of the sound and some walks in the national park. I was a bit hesitant to get on another boat, but the water was like glass so it was all good. We saw the tallest sea-peak in the world, Mitre peak. It rises a vertical mile straight out of the water from sea level. That was pretty neat to see. We also saw more seals sunning themselves on rocks and the boat went right up to a waterfall. Milford sound isn't actually a sound, it is a fiord, which means it is a water filled valley that was carved out by glacial activitiy. This means that the sides are extremely steep, and at its deepest the fiord is 300m deep. The open ocean we travelled between Stewart Island and the south island was only about 35m deep. Milford sound is pretty unique in other ways too, it gets some of the highest rainfall anywhere in the world, on average it sees 6m of rain annually, some years its been as high as 9m of rain. this means that when all that rain hits the steep sides of the mountains and runs down into the fiord, the fresh water pickes up tannins from the trees and becomes a browny reddish color. Because fresh water is not as dense as salt water it floats on top of the sea water in the fiord. The color of the fresh water filters out most of the sunlight from hitting the salt water and as a result, you get life in the fiord that usually is only found miles down under the sea. Things like black coral that usually grows only in water so deep that most people will never see it, can grow in only 10m of water. Its a pretty amazing phenomenon actually. We stopped at an underwater observatory in the fiord too. It is a floating building that has a glassed in observation area underneath it that goes down to about 10m below the surface. The life you can see in just that small area is astounding. There were sea cucumbers, starfish, anenemes, tube worms, black coral, kelp, and fish galore. It was very cool to see. But once again I got seasick. REALLY??? So I had to go back up while Miles took photos. On our drive back through Fiordland National Park to get back to Te Anau we stopped and did a short walk called the Chasm. It was pretty cool, we were walking through this dense rain forest and we could hear rushing water but it wasn't until we were about 3 feet from the edge of this CRAZY gorge that we saw it. (don't worry there was a trail and a bridge, we wouldn't have walked into the gorge) The rock formations were absolutly incredible. It was a bit like Maligne Canyon, only shorter and with crazier rock shapes. We took lots of photos but not sure they do it any form of justice.
The 28th was another do nothing day as I was all sick and bleh again, and Miles was feeling tired too (THAT should have sent of warning bells, that man hates sitting around doing nothing)
The 29th we packed up our stuff and drove to Queenstown. And Now I"m feeling fine, but Miles is locked in a dark room with a bad cold. Sigh. cant win here these last few days. So yesterday while he slept I did a bit of shopping and walked around Queenstown, but its really just more fun with someone to talk to. I may be one of few women who can shop with her husband and say its more fun than going alone, but there you have it! Queenstown reminds me of Banff, lots of highpriced tourist trap souvenier shops, and lots of tourists... pretty but busy. And today I've just been on the computer, updating blogs and emailing people. We'll see if Miles is feeling anybetter when I get back to the room and maybe we'll head out into the world to check things out.
Tomorrow we fly to Auckland, spend a night there, and then catch a flight the evening of March 3rd to come home!
Which probably means that this will be the last blog. So hopefully I haven't bored anyone and you've enjoyed hearing about our adventures and seeing some of the photos.
See you when we get home!!!
Cheers
Brianna and Miles
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