The Land of the Long White Cloud

In an hour I will be setting off back to the UK. I am currently staying with friends in an apartment overlooking the beach. I contemplated doing a run or taking a walk on the beach in my last hour. But eventually settled on writing my final New Zealand blog post.

I recently learned that when the Maori settled New Zealand, they named it Aotearoa. This can apparently be translated into 'The Land of the Long White Cloud' and its easy to see why they chose this name.

As we were driving back towards Lake Takepo on our second to last day, we experienced the Long white cloud in all of its glory. Coupled with the fresh snow on the ground everywhere, it was majestic:

We took another couple of photos from the road:

Our last night we spent in Lake Takepo which is close to the site where the New Zealand Prime Minister's hiking party recently had to give unsuccessful CPR to one of her close friends in a remote mountain hut. There were film crews everywhere.

In the morning we drove up to the observatory on the hill overlooking the lake:

Two Days Two Sounds

Milford Sound

On our second full day we drove the five hours past some amazing scenery to Milford Sound. According to Wikipedia Rudyard Kipling named the Sound (although it is actually  Fjord and not a Sound) the 8th wonder of the world and it is easy to see why. The Maori used to visit the area for fishing in the cold winter months, and European settlers have always been attracted to the area. However it wasn't until the 40's that an easy route to the Sound could be built.

This is because Milford sound is pretty darn remote. Over two hours drive from the nearest petrol station, you have to be careful what to take (snow chain and fuel being essential). The drive takes you over some mountainous terrain and over a pass culminating in  a long tunnel that delves beneath the mountains. I spent some time reading about the construction of the road which was in itself no small feat and took many men, many years.

The beauty of our trip was that because it was midwinter (and around 0 degrees), there were barely any other tourists (as with the Routeburn track) as they were all up at the ski fields in Queenstown. But the scenery is perfect in any weather (provided you have the right clothes), in fact changes in weather made the scenery even more amazing and the trip even more exciting!

Here is a photo of a rainy clearing in the forest on one of our short walks (there will be more up on Flickr when I can get them to upload):

And the Sound itself when the clouds finally cleared:

Lucy chilling out:

But alas, we were unable to go on a boat trip out to the sound, just after taking this last photo, we were informed by the tourist office that the snows were closing in and the road would close at 5pm (40 minutes time) with the potential for being closed for s few days. We had to high tail it out of there.

Lake Manapouri and Doubtful Sound

We were so taken with the sound that we decided to drive as quickly as we could to Lake Manapouri (the gateway to Doubtful Sound) that afternoon. Lake Manapouri is in itself serene and beautiful. I took a nice shot in the morning:

To get to Doubtful Sound from here we had to take a 1 hour boat trip across the lake to the beginning of the Wilmot Pass (a very high pass created during the construction of the nearby Hydro Power station and not connected to any other roads!). And it snowed. And it snowed some more. And we were in a coach (albeit fitted with snow chains). And the road had some of the steepest roads in New Zealand:

From the other side of the pass, we caught another boat for a 3 hour trip around the Sound. We did see some seals, but couldn't see a lot due to the severity of the snowstorm. the captain said that he had never seen snow so far down in the Sound.

But it was beautiful to see and we were visiting the Sound as it is usually seen (it rains 2 out of 3 days there). I took this one of an extremely blue looking little boat against an extremely white background:

Another Slide Show - You Lucky People!

Lucy and I just got back from our whistle-stop tour of New Zealand, we spent most of our time down near Queenstown around which a large part of the Lord of the Rings was filmed (mostly the scenes that involved the Misty mountains and Gondor).

It is absolutely spectacular!

I would like to say that I managed to take some excellent photographs during the trip - but the truth is that the photographs took themselves - I was just pushing the button.

Every drive we went on, everywhere we stayed we saw scenery that we didn't think actually existed. New Zealand is now officially my favourite country ever.

And now for the slide show...

View of Mount Cook

On our first day we set off in our hire car from Christchurch to Glenorchy (1 hours drive north of Queenstown). After a couple of hours driving we passed lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki. the greenish stones in the lake give it a turquoise hue and the water is the clearest your will ever see. This picture is of Mount Cook as viewed from the opposite side of Lake Pukaki.

The Routeburn Track

On our first full day we drove from Glenorchy and hit the Routeburn track. The full trail was closed to us due to snow and avalance risk, but we did the first day. 

A rockfall at part of the track had removed some of the trees and enabled us to get a good view of the surrounding mountains.

More to follow...

The RouteBURN

I am in New Zealand at the moment. Did I tell anyone I was going to New Zealand? I can't remember, everything has been such a confused mess of activity over the last week or so.

Its Tuesday morning. We spent yesterday (our first full day) doing the first 8 hr leg of the Routeburn track (allgedly one of the top 10 walking tracks in the world). The scenery is like nothing I have ever seen before. It is literally like walking through middle earth!

I can't upload any pictures as yet, but here is link to some (entirely random) photos of the region.