Hello again...this Geocities thing can be a real pain in the butt when you don't have a Java-enabled computer (like right now, sigh...
Anyways, I'm now just outside Auckland, but that's the North Island so you'll have to navigate over to my other page to get the dirt on that (plus I'm lazy & forgetful enough to not wanna type in too many html tags here).
When we last left off, I was about to embark on the Doubtful Sound overnight cruise... this was well worth the NZ$300ish because Doubtful Sound is pretty darn difficult to access if you don't do it thru Real Journeys. RJ takes you across Lake Manapouri on a fast ferry, hten another 40 min on a bus over a pass to the Deep Cove wharf at the inland end of Doubtful Sound. Although the mountains surrounding it are smaller and are covered with vegetation rather than the sheer rock & couuntless waterfalls that Milford Sound features, Doubtful is more than 3x as large and it's isolation is a big part of it's appeal. It got it's name from CApt. Cook (more on him later), who sailed past it's mouth because he believed it was "doubtful" that there would be enough wind in the sound to get the ship back out!
To make a long story short, the overnight trip on Doubtful included: a visit to a seal colony out near the mouth & the rugged Tasman Sea; another couple dozeen waterfalls & "trevalanches" (Kiwi for tree avalanches); a little splash-about in a mini-kayak on the still waters of Precipice Cove off the sound; an entertaining & somewhaaat bizarre slideshow by Richard the ship Naturalist; 3 bunkmates from none other than Basel Switzerland (1 of them a devastating snorer!); 10 min of silence with boat engines & generators turned off up another arm of the sound; and finally the coup de grace (sp?), 3 or 4 bottlenose dolphins splashing about alongside the ship in the wake, no more than 5 ft from the side of the ship!
(sidebar: As we were told in both places, Doubtful & Milford Sounds are technically fjords rather than sounds becuause sounds are created by rivers while fjords are carved out by glaciers, as Doubtful & Milford were.)
After that spectacular trip, my mood was dashed a bit by hte news from Madrid, but I forged ahead back along the roads travelled on the REI trip. I had another night in Q-Town, where I did just about the fastest 40min of my life in a jetboat thru Shotover canyon. THen in was on northward past Lake Pukaki & Mt Cook/Aoraki, detouring around Christchurch and finally arriving some 8 hrs later on a spectacularlly sunny evening in Kaikoura. My roommates for the night areLesley from the UK and another young gal from Israel whose name I forget. Lesley is about to head up to Picton to do a trip I'd been considering called "Ultimate Sounds", which does a day each of hiking, kayacking, & biking along the Queen Charlotte Track.
The next morning (Sunday) I go to the Kaikoura "i" (visitor) centre and find out that the Pat's-schedule-compatible Wednesday Ultimate Sounds trip is fully booked, but there's room on the Monday one... the same one my roomie from last night is on. So I decide to bail on going sperm whale watching and other fun stuff in Kaikoura cuz the QC Track is too tempting.
So I make the 2-hour drive up to Picton for the Ultimate Sounds adventure starting the next day (after a spectacular coastal walk along the Clifftop track in Kaikoura). While not as spectaculare as Doubtful or Milford, the Marlborough Sounds are quite scenic as well. The highlight of this area is the history of the area... it was here that CApt. Cook claimed NZ for Great Britain & the QC Track begins at Ship Cove, where Cook would cammp out for several days on each of his 4 voyages to NZ. After just having read Michener's "Alaska" during my summer trip up to Alaska, where Cook also visited several times, I feel like I gotta find a good biography on the ol' chap... seems he was quite a guy.
Anyways, the first day hiking was nice & the 2nd day kayacking was a blast... we even saw some dolphins splashing around chasing fish! Unfortunatley, we had to cut ther 3rd day of cycling a bit short cuz it rained heavily hte night before and the track was in pretty bad shape and our trusy guide Harry (who coincidentally looked like a shorter-grayer haired version of Harry Shearer's "Spinal Tap" character Derek Smalls) decided that since there are some quite steep drops alongside the track, we'd only do a short bit of it. So Although the trip was fun, I kinda wished I walked the track instead of doing the organized trip... there are several accomodations on the way, so you can easily do it by yourself if you want.
The Ultimate trip though did score me some more new friends... my UK roomie Lesley, David & Emma, also fromm the UK (and who *better* send me that movie clip with the duck!), and Chris & Susi, who I'll get to visit in Melbourne soon.
Anyways, the trip ended on St Patrick's day, so I had my Guinness in the evening, then it was off the next morning on the ferry across Cook Strait to the North Island. Tally Ho!!
-PM
09mar2004:
Finally, an update!! Sorry for being so tardy, but various things have kept me away from the computer for the last week or two. One of the main ones is this thing that the Kiwis call the sun! Yes, it's been spectacular weather for most of my solo travels here in the South Island.
Today, I got as close to the South Pole as I ever have in my life... Slope Point is the southernmost point on the South Island, closer to the South Pole than it is to the Equator. And to think that just about eiightmonths ago I was in the Arctic Circle!
After the REI trip ended back in Christchurch (quick review on Christchurch... nice gardens & parks, but basically a city... I didn't try any of the museums or anything tho, not really my cup of tea), it was kinda Travel-Shock to be on my own all of a sudden. So at the helm of my new trusty steed (a white 1992 Toyota Corona!), I began venturing south on 28feb, just after my last update...
I started in Akaroa, which is the main town on the Banks Peninsula, just an hour & a half from Christchurch. The BP was formed by two enormous volcanic eruptions a long long time ago... I have to remember to pick up a postcard of the arial shot of the BP because it's really spectacular... it hangs off the southeast of Christchurch and 's kinda shaped like a semi-closed mouthed Pac-Man, with the mouth facing south.
I stayed in a backpackers room in the Mt Vernon Lodge, which was a very relaxing place 2km up hte hill from "downtown" Akaroa. The downtown is a nice place to walk around, and the Mt Vernon Lodge is at the start of a good trail further up into the hills of the BP, which had some good views when the fog lifted for an hour or so around noon the day I went walking around up there.
The highlight of my stay in Akaroa was probably meeting Olga, my new Aussie friend who's living in Sydney. She was staying at Mt Vernon too, and we were up until 1:30 chatting in the lounge with a wacky Englishman named Alan, comparing travel stories, etc... Olga & I ended up hanging out for lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner in downtown Akaroa & in between each walked up & down the waterfront several times. She was very cool and has travelled a *lot*, so she had a bazillion interesting stories. Hopefully I'll get to catch up with her in Sydney when I get there.
After Akaroa, the rains returned, but I was just driving down the coast to Oamaru that day, so it was all good. Oamaru is the self-proclaimed Penguin Capital of NZ. As I was staying in a backpackers again (the Empire Hotel... thumbs up, nice rooms & facilities, great owners) I was in a cheapskate frame of mind, so I followed the owners advice to go to the spots to see penguins for free. There are 2 kinds of penguins that can be seen regularly in NZ, the little Blue Penguin and the Yellow-Eyed Penguin. Blues are the smallest penguins in the world while Yellow-Eyed are severly endangered.
First I went to the Yellow-Eyed viewing site, which was a little hut on a hillside just south of Oamaru, way up high above the beach. It was a Candlestick Park-worthy windy day, and it was tough to stay out there for the 2 hours that I did, but eventually we saw one lonely yellow-eye walk up the beach, hunched over like a weary commuter trudging that last couple hundred yards from his bus or train stop to his home. Considering the brutal wind, that was enough for me.
Later, at about 10pm, the Blue Penguins scurry around the brush in this little railyard just behind the hotel. They don't seem to be too freaked out by humans walking around with flashlights looking for them, so I saw about a dozen of them within about an hour.
That was about it for Oamaru... on south to Dunedin. I stayed at the Leviathan, again in the backpackers wing. Now that I think aobut it, I'm not sure how I made it... it was kind of a pit. I mean, I'm a guy, so I have a pretty high tolerance for bathroom sloppiness, but this place was pretty bad. Talking to this ex-kiwi woman Jo now living in Adelaide, Australia the other day, she said that she'd heard that pretty much all the backpackers lodging in Dunedin is like that, so it's better to not stay in the city.
However, it was good to be in a city for a couple days for logistics... I'm now booked for an overnight boat trip on Doubtful Sound in a couple days and that's supposed to be amazing. As for Dunedin itself, I spent a day out on the Otago Peninsula... the *major* highlight here was the Royal Albatross Preserve. Another windy day, but this is what you want for the Albatrosses, because they need the wind to fly, and I coulda watched them fly all day. In shape and coloring, they look a lot like common seagulls, but when they fly, they just glide like nothing you've ever seen. Just mesmorizing. They're big, too... up to a 3m wingspan. And they can glide over 500km in a day (I'm not doing the math to convert to feet & miles... sorry, it's late!)
Got to see a few more yellow-eyes around Dunedin too. Up north, there's a lighthouse near the bizarre Moeraki Rocks where I saw 2 in captivity and 2 more wild ones on the beach. Then, down in the Catlins, where I've been the last 2 days, I say one at Roaring Bay (right up close to the hut even) near the spectacular Nugget Point.
Other hightlights of the Catlins region (which is the southeastern corner of the South Island) were the Purakaunui Falls, Jack's Blowhole (a 55m deep hole in the ground that's 200m from the sea!), and Porpise Bay, where you can see the tiny Hector's Dolphins (also endangered). Driving around in the Catlins means lotsa gravel roads, so it takes a while to get around, but it's worth it when you reach one of these sites.
That's all for now.... next on the agenda is to head north, first to do the Doubtful Sound trip, then back up to thru Queenstown & Christchurch on the way to try to see Sperm Whales & dolphins at Kaikoura & maybe walk the Queen Charlotte Track near Picton.
Adios....
-PM