New Zealand: day 19 - Milford Sound

I got up early to get down to the water to shoot the sunrise.  The sky was overcast - full grey - and no moody fog.  So, no colors and no drama.  Oh well, it was still a lovely morning, and the bird chorus was amazing.

deep water tour boats waiting in the harbor

curious weka checking out my camera bag

After dawn, I came back to the hotel room to check my email and have some breakfast.  The staff brought it to us - pastries and muesli etc.  At 10am sharp, we headed out for our adventure - hiking a portion of the Milford Track.  The weather called for grey and drizzle.  I packed an umbrella.  We started with a water taxi across the bay.

 

H made friends with the couple behind us, who were from Sacramento.

The taxi dropped us at a little harbor at Sandfly Point.  Captain Mark and Pilot Jack let us off, pointed us in the right direction, told us to be back for pick-up no later than 4.30pm, and we were off.  The Australians hoofed it as fast as possible, but we and the other Californians took it easy, chitchatting and stopping to take photos.  H befriended them and chatted them up quite a bit!

view from Sandfly Point

Milford Track marker at Sandfly Point.

Our path today was an out-and-back section of the Milford Track, ending at Giant Gate Falls.  It was about 7.2 miles round trip, with minimal elevation change.  The terrain was mostly easy walking, but there were some spots where packed trail gave way to stepping stones.  Most creeks were crossed by bridges, but some had to be hopped over.  

Finally saw a bell bird!

Monkey Tail!

well-framed mountain.

most of the path looked like this

a bridge let us cross this creek without getting wet

H taking photos.  She's in her 'macrophotography' phase.

Stoats are a nuissance and a predator, so the NZ gov't is trying to curb their population.  Every 200m or so would be a stoat trap, marked with a pink triangle like this.  It was a useful way for us to gauge our distance.

By the time we got to Giant Gate Falls, the sun had burnt through the clouds and the skies were blue.  The falls pour into a creek that feeds Lake Ada.  We crossed that creek and stopped at a rest area to have lunch, take a break, and snap some photos

S on the bridge below the falls

Giant Gate Falls

Our trio was staggered for the return trip.  S & H started back while I was still photographing the falls, and by the time I caught up with S, she said that H had jetted ahead.  S and I walked together for much of the way back, never seeing H until we got back to Sandfly Point.  It made me a little nervous to have her so far ahead and unsupervised, but the trail did not fork, there are no predators of humans, and she's old enough now to not go wandering off-trail into the forest like a hobbit.

We waited at Sandfly Point for a few minutes while the water taxi cycled back to us.

the taxi is on the bottom left, incoming

The 7.2 mile trip was the longest hike H had ever done, and she did it like a champ.  Cheerful, energetic, and excited!  But at the end of the hike, she was pooped.  Once we were back in the main area, we grabbed an ice cream, found a souvenir magnet for the fridge, and came back to the room.  S and I thought we might go out for another small hike, but once our boots were off, they weren't going back on.  

We had another nice dinner in Pio Pio, the lodge restaurant.  Our server Peter also served us last night; he is a 9/11 survivor and apparently also helped save the lives of four other people that day.  

After dinner, H noped out for another adventure, but S and I went back down to the central area to hunt for the famous swing.  We found it!  We had to scramble a bit to get to it, but it was worth the scramble to be there at dusk.

Tomorrow is our last full day in NZ.  Then we start our travels home!

New Zealand: day 18 - Te Anau to Milford Sound

Today I woke up early to take my Italian lesson over zoom. I had missed the last few weeks b/c of the travel schedule and was looking forward to today's.  Sadly, a work emergency emerged at the same time, so I only got about 5 minutes of Italian lesson before I had to leave the zoom to work on the work issue.  Alas.

We checked out of our lovely hotel in Te Anau, gassed up the car, and hit the road for Milford Sound.  The drive takes about 2 hours, but we had budged over twice that so that we could take pit stops, small hikes, and lots of photos.  Sadly, the weather was pretty miserable for the whole drive.  Not dangerous, just lame.  Rain and wind made walking annoying and photography impossible.  We took a few short stops, but mostly we just persevered into Milford Sound.  

roadside pullout for waterfall!

We got to the Milford Sound Lodge a little early and were able to check right into our room (they had us scheduled for an early check-in, which I don't remember requesting).  It was still spitty and misty, with fog everywhere, so we spent some time settling in to our room (2-BR suite) and getting comfortable.  S and I took a quick walk/hike to see the area, and the fog was nestling nicely into the craggy cliffsides (H stayed in to play video games).

At 4pm, we met up with a naturalist at the lodge for an introduction to local flora & fauna.  Henrique taught us a lot, and he had a lovely passion for his work.  He introduced each tree and mountain to us as a 'new friend.' H stayed into play video games.

After the naturalist walk, we finally got some good photos of a fantail!  These birds are pretty comfortable around humans, but they're so quick that they're hard to photograph.  I finally got one!

Dinner was in the lodge restaurant, Pio Pio, and was pretty fancy.  Afterwards, the fog had started to clear, and the three of us took a short but steep hike up to a lookout, from where we had a great view of Mitre Peak and another fantail.

Then back to the room to settle in for the night.  I'm going to try to catch sunrise tomorrow morning!

 

New Zealand: day 17 - Kepler Track

A great big day to start our visit to Fjordland!  We all got a good night's sleep (the beds in Queenstown were not the best).  I had a 7am check-in call with a student, after which I took a quick run into town for breakfast foods. We met our tour van at 9.30 to start our day.  Helen and Michelle our guides on a daylong hike (kiwis call it a 'tramp') along part of the Kepler Track, one of the great hiking trails in NZ.  Michelle led a group of four women, and Helen stayed with us.  We started with a 5 minute helicopter ride from Te Anau across Lake Te Anau and up to the hikers hut at the top of Mount Luxmore.  

The Kepler Track is a 60km loop that hikers typically tackle over four days - huts are placed strategically along the trail, and hikers can make reservations to stay in their bunks.  The Luxmore hut sits above the treeline and can sleep 52 hikers.  Some in individual bunks, and some in sausage-link bunks.  During the summer months, the hut has running water.  There's a kitchen/living area on the ground floor.

 

The first part of our hike was uphill from the hut through the brush to see the high area of the park.  Shortly out the door we met a family of Kea parrots.  Kea are the only alpine parrots on earth; they're very smart, and long ago they learned that they could attack livestock for food. That led to a bounty being placed on their heads, and for a while, kea were endangered.  Now, thankfully, they've recovered and the bounty has been lifted.  We had a quintet of birds that hung out with us for a while, showing off, buzzing us, and trying to steal our hiking poles (and S's bag)

We didn't get too far up the hill before the cold wind turned to freezing rain.  We all brought rain gear (and the tour organizers lent us rain pants), but it was pretty brutal.  So, we turned back for the Luxmore hut and a packed lunch (pack it in, pack it out).  Michelle's group arrived a few minutes later.  

After lunch, we headed down the mountain.  We started with a trek across the hills above the treeline, and while the freezing rain on Mt. Luxmore had stopped, the clouds and drama hadn't.

As we dropped lower (still above the treeline), the winds died down and we could see more definition in the clouds, hopefully promising nicer weather.

Helen our guide, is also a naturalist (and an alpaca farmer - she made her hat and gloves from her alpacas' wool!), and she stopped frequently to tell us about what we were seeing, both near (leaves, medicine, birds, berries, animals) and far (lakes, mountains, political battles to save the Fjordland).  We also talked about the economy, power plants, farming, tourism, and pavlova.

We descended below the treeline, and the second half of the day was completely different.  We were suddenly in a beech forest, full of ferns and moss and beetles and creeks and limestone cliffs and lichen and so much mud!

We were supposed to meet our water taxi back across the lake at 4.10, so we hoofed it the last km.  I stayed behind to take a few extra photos, getting to the beach just as the water taxi pulled up.  The trail diverged at that point, so S waited as sentry to flag me down.

We hopped into the water taxi and got back to Te Anau pretty quick. Helen drove us back to the hotel, and I was showered and sipping a kombucha less than an hour after we reached the end of the tramp.

H & S elected to eat takeaway pizza, so I drove out to the only pizza place open to pick some up.  It was barely pizza, but we were all hungry.  After dinner, I grabbed my camera stuff and headed to nearby Manapouri to shoot the sunset.  In Te Anau, the skies looked promising, but by the time I got to Manapouri, the grey had returned.  

Tomorrow we depart from Te Anau and head into Milford Sound for more dramatic beauty!

New Zealand: day 16 - Queenstown to Te Anau

Today was our last morning in Queenstown.  We woke up and checked out of our airbnb without incident.  After that, we had a few minutes to stop by a grocery store to pick up some supplies for the next few days.   Then, we headed to Shotover Jet Boats for one last adrenaline rush!  There are a few companies that run jet boat excursions in Queenstown, but Shotover is the gold standard.  They actually had Prince Harry and Kate on their boat back in '14!  Our pilot Matt knew his way around the Shotover River, in and out of the deep canyons, steering the boat inches from the rock walls, and doing massive 360 spins that we all squealed for.  We had all packed dry clothes in case we needed it, but none of us got soaked - we just got splashed a bit (and had an amazing time).

There were four boats on the river at a time, and the pilots were in communication constantly.

current favorite photo of H

After the jet boat, we got back in the car and hightailed it out of Queenstown.  Our destination was Te Anau, a small resort city 2 hours away.  We stopped a few times to break up the drive, including at this natural reserve which is more or less what scientists think the landscape looked like thousands of years ago.

What looks like sand on the footpath in the photo above is actually a sand-colored moss!  Or lichen?  Whatever.  It's not sand.

We rolled into Te Anau in the late afternoon of a simply glorious day.  We took a walk along the lake to a local bird sanctuary.

We had high hopes for it, but there were just a few birds that were visible, including the rare takahē.  They were all in cages that felt pretty prison-like to me.  

The whole sanctuary is under new management, so things are in transition.  I'm not sure if that's good or bad long-term, but short term, the whole place felt under-supported.  Cages were in poor condition, dividers were made out of plywood, and many of the enclosures were just empty.

Walk this way to the birds that are no longer here.

We had dinner in an American Western-Themed restaurant (photos of John Wayne EVERYWHERE); S and I each had tasty salads, and H had a plate of nachos (she liked them, but they are vastly inferior to every nachos option in the US).  However, the real reason we went to this restaurant was b/c they had pavlova on the menu for a dessert.  H and I had been looking forward to trying a good NZ pavlova, but we hadn't seen it on a menu once this whole trip!  I'm not sure if the ubiquity was overstated or if we were eating at tourist-focused restaurants that thought pavlova too prosaic for international travelers.  This dessert was delicious - a light meringue covered in a passionfruit sauce with a little bit of ice cream.  Worth the wait.

After dinner, we took a drive up to a look-out that I might return to for sunrise photos in a few days.  We got a bright sunset on the windy ridge.

We're now settling into our lovely accommodations at Fjordland Lakeview Motel & Apartments.  After being crammed into a small condo in Queenstown, it's nice to have a little more space to spread out.