New Zedland trip: Water (and more Mountains)

When we move to Seattle, we'll have a bit more water in our lives. Part of what makes New Zealand's mountains so incredible is how they're set next to the ocean, lakes, waterfalls, rivers, glaciers, and fiords.

Here are some of our favorite water-related scenes (minus beach-y scenes, which we'll have in the next post).

Lake Matheson

Near the town of Fox Glacier, where we stayed for our second night, is a lake that is known for how it reflects the mountains. We were told to get there early, before the clouds moved in.

Our luck was fantastic:

 The mist was just rising from the lake as we approached.

The lake was almost a perfect mirror... with some lingering mist for extra effect.

That tall thing is Aoraki/Mt. Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand. Later, we'll see it from the other side. But this view (which they named "the view of views") was unbelievable... even worth sharing the path with a bus-load of British teenagers.

Glaciers

The snow you see on those mountains feeds into glaciers. There are two glaciers that are especially easy to visit: Franz Josef Glacier and Fox Glacier.

We came to Franz Josef first. The valley felt like something from some other era - not for the last time, it felt like the laws of physics had been changed just a bit:

For safety reasons, we couldn't get too close, but the walk up the valley was stunning. A stone-grey stream came out from under the glacier:

Our weather luck was better with Fox Glacier, and the safe path allowed us to get much closer. A huge river of ice, with ice-valleys instead of waves:

As the glacier moves along, rocks and dirt fall on top of it (since it's carving out the valley). Here you can see part of the edge, along with some helpful signs about why one shouldn't run up to touch it:

 This was the view back down the valley. You can see how, when the glacier went further, it carved almost vertical cliffs:

 
Waterfalls

The waterfalls we saw tended to be dwarfed by other parts of the scene, but were still striking. (Despite being less dramatic than at other times of the year, since it had been a particularly dry summer). Here's one in the Franz Josef valley:

The next is, according to our guidebook, one of the most photographed waterfalls in the world (whatever that means). We hereby add one more:

The closest we got to a waterfall was this one:

This waterfall goes directly into Milford Sound. This view was from a boat. Speaking of which...

Milford Sound

Milford Sound may be the main tourist destination on the South Island. Turns out there is good reason for that. One approaches by road (see our previous posts), eventually ending up at the edge of the water:

The best way to see the Sound (which is actually a fjord) is by boat. We got some advice about dodging the main rush of tourists, and had a pretty comfortable ride on the red boat here:

If we'd had more time, we would have done a kayak tour, but what we saw was still pretty amazing.

Heading out towards the sea, here's a more distant view of the waterfall from above:

The waterfall is at the point where two glaciers once met.

Another view on the way out:

At the mouth of the fiord is the Tasman Sea (if you kept going in this direction, you'd get to Australia):

We then turned around and headed back inland:

We could have also done a scenic plane ride. We opted out of that, but Naomi caught this shot:

Lakes

The mountain range forms a pretty effective rain barrier. Not far from the above, one suddenly finds dry mountains and stunningly blue skies:

This is near Queenstown (more on that later). 

Later in our trip, we headed back towards Aoraki/Mt. Cook from the east. Here you can see it across Lake Punakaki:

The water really is that color. We read that it's due to some sediment that reflects light in a certain way. Our last night was spent next to the lake just near it, Lake Tekapo (which had a similar sediment-light effect). Here are some other visitors we saw:

And one more shot, bringing out the bizarre color:

Next time: Animals, beaches, and forest (and sun)!

New Zedland trip: The mountains

We recently returned from a journey to the south island of New Zealand. The scenery lived up to the quote on the back of our Lonely Planet guide: "New Zealand is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The word 'Wow!' will escape from your lips at least once a day."

We went well over our once-a-day 'Wow!' quota. 

Peter Jackson's decision to complete the 3 hobbit movies now makes a lot more sense: the Lord of the Rings movies barely touched on the varieties of amazing settings we saw in just 9 days. We took around 1500 photos, so it was a difficult task to choose just some to put on the blog. So, we decided to make a few posts each with its own theme. 

If you would like a sense of where we went, you can see our route on this map.

We'll keep our words brief. Just imagine everything in the pictures being much more towering than it seems.

The topic of this post is: Mountains. There were lots of them. And they were hard to fully capture in photographs, but we tried. 

On the approach to our first destination in Arthur's Pass:

If you look closely, you can see the red-flowering rata (a type of tree) halfway up this mountain. Apparently we came at the right time of year to see them.

The mountains we saw after Arthur's Pass were unmarked (no special look-outs, no signs, etc.). Like they were no big deal. But they were still stunningly beautiful:

One of our goals on the west coast of NZ was to see glaciers. More on those next time. But here's a teaser shot of the mountains on the approach to Fox Glacier:

On a clear day, one can see Mt. Cook from near Fox Glacier. We had great weather luck (though apparently NZ is having a drought now). Here's the tallest mountain on the island... from a very long ways away:

This was only our first view of mighty Cook. It reappeared at various other points along the trip.

After a couple days on the west coast (more about that soon), we headed inland again, via Haast Pass. More outrageously amazing mountains, this time with a river and low clouds:

The mountains continue inland, in a drier way. This is part of a range called 'The Remarkables' near Queenstown.

One of the best-known destinations on the south island is a fjord called 'Milford Sound.' We liked the Sound (fjord), but liked the drive there at least as much:

There were lots of places to stop on the road. One of our hosts had recommended one hike in particular, at a place called 'Gertrude Saddle.' The rock was a sort of silvery granite, and the hike led us straight into a valley with sheer rock walls with bits of forest, alpine shrubs, and waterfalls.

A view of the approach, with some Germans for perspective:

Looking in the opposite direction:

Up closer, on an ascent, with Naomi for perspective:

The view from our lunch spot, with feet for perspective:

And here's a final glance as we looked back while returning. The shrubs were different from anything we've seen before:

After the hike, we went through a tunnel into the Milford Valley. Here are two views of that:

Wow wow wow.

Stay tuned for glaciers, lakes, rivers... and more mountains (of course).

5 photos from Melbourne summer

Happy 2013, everyone!

For those up north in the grip of winter, here are a few warm scenes from Melbourne.

The sun sets over the bay on the solstice:

The Mornington Peninsula on Boxing Day:

Kite-surfers on the first Sunday of 2013:

Last, here's a piece of street art that appeared a while ago near us. Warm weather makes it easier to stand around and appreciate such things:

Summer gold, summer food, summer b-day

A few weeks ago, we bought a 'barbie' for vegetarian grilling (no prawns/shrimp).

December 1st is the official beginning of the Australian summer. We were lucky enough to have a car for a few weeks in November, which let us prepare properly: buying gardening products, said barbeque, and taking some friends out to goldfields country.

Summer has us feeling lazy, so this is going to be kind of a lazy post, with limited wit.

An old gold town and gold mine

Our books tell us that Melbourne really got going when gold was discovered northwest of the city. The gold rush is long over, but there are a few remnants. One is the cute town of Maldon:

 

According to one book, the whole town of Maldon is officially listed as 'notable' by the National Trust. Hard to beat that.

Other remnants are ruins of smelting buildings, some of which we climbed around with friends Jon and Heather.

A bit uphill of the ruins was the entrance to a former goldmine that offers tours:

Our guide told us that the mine had yielded a few hundred dollars worth of gold. It cost quite a bit more to dig it. This literal goldmine was not a metaphorical goldmine.

However (we were told), the reliable cool temperatures inside the mine had saved some feverish children's lives during one especially hot summer some decades ago.

Gardening efforts (aka plants we haven't killed yet)

We have things growing in our backyard now. Some are even things we meant to grow.

Potatoes emerged in a pot we thought only had strawberries in it. We haven't harvested the potatoes yet, but they provided some nice flowers:

The strawberry plants have been less enthusiastic about life than the potatoes, but they have yielded two berries so far. Here's one:

Naomi discovered that some planters are made out of cloth, and wanted to try them out. Here's one with lettuce and capsicum (i.e. pepper) plants.

Colin's first summer birthday BBQ

We had an initial trial run with the barbeque, which was a success (no injuries, no food poisoning, only a small amount of swearing while trying to get the coals going). Inspired by that, we decided to put it at the center of a small birthday gathering for Colin.

A handful of friends came over, and patiently sat around while Colin slowly over- and under-cooked their food.

When it cooled down outside, we moved into our living room for cake.

Cake!