be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
Another early morning – lots of driving to do! We saw the hot air balloon again and lamented not having known about it to book it. We drove through the rainforest mountains of Mt. Aspiring National Park and stopped at the spectacular spectacular waterfall at the Gates of Haast in Haast Pass. It was about twenty degrees cooler down by the water, and I got a nice little rock for a souvenir. We followed the western coast up to glacier country and had beautiful views of white beaches and crystal clear water.
At Franz Josef glacier, Dad hiked to the base of the glacier while Mom and I took a helicopter to the top of the glacier and spent a few hours hiking around the ice checking out ice caves and streams and bottomless holes in the ice. Our guide was an American so we had plenty to chat about. The glacier hike was the experience of a lifetime – breathtaking!
Afterwards we drove up to Westport, stopping for dinner in Greymouth, where Dad’s meat was brought out on a hot stone slab for cooking. Later I noticed these places all over Australia, so that must be big down there.
via emma
ok, not really, but this looks totally cool:
according to atlas obscura:
Roughly 2 million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist without heat, light, or oxygen, and are essentially the definition of “primordial ooze.” The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the waterfall its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.
The White Mountain from charles on Vimeo.
be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
An early morning – we saw a hot air balloon high in the sky as we left Queenstown. We drove through Otago and saw cows, thousands of sheep, and even a few deer farms. We entered Southland, gassed up in Te Anau, and drove through the Southern Alps and through Homer Tunnel to Milford Sound. The drive wasn’t nearly as rough as expected so we arrived a few hours early. We enjoyed the loud sounds of the rainforest, the lovely views of Mitre Peak and examined some big, papery white spiders that had spun their webs along the tour building’s portico. We had lunch at the one eating establishment – the Blue Duck Café. I ate a meat pie and we listened to the Johnny Cash playing over the stereo.
The boat tour of the fjord was gorgeous. At the beginning of our voyage we saw bottlenose dolphins playing at the bow. We learned that the area gets over 20m (65ft) of rain a year, and it rains 200 out of 365 days. It hadn’t rained in a few days, but previous to that had rained three weeks straight. The fjord was huge and impressive, and the scenery was fantastic – rainforest running up the mountains and right down to the water’s edge, exposed parts of the Pacific plate’s fault line and fur seals sunning themselves on big flat rocks.
We stopped at the Milford Underwater Observatory and saw black ferns, schools of tiny fish, starfish and urchins. The water was full of sediment, which the guide said was a recent development; usually the water was crystal clear and they weren’t sure why it was so cloudy. (note: the observatory is where I got my sand flea bites)
We boarded a different boat to go back to the dock and got a good look at Bowen Falls, which provides water and power for the few buildings in the area. On the drive back to Queenstown we stopped and saw a gorgeous waterfall in a gorge called ‘The Chasm’ and took photos at the Mirror Lake.
the face-cleaning starts at about 1:35
warning: this video’s audio track is some sort of high-pitched feedback squeal that drove me nuts inside of 15 seconds. maybe mute your computer. the only sound is tiny munching noises, anyway.
milford sound, fiordland national park
southland, new zealand
i’d like to take this opportunity to thank qantas for the great little in-flight snack bags. full of native treats – mints, cookies, crisps, nuts, fruit – i’m still enjoying them. right now: the anzac biscuit which is a kind of coconut-y oatmeal-y shortbread that i’m sure i’ll be craving more of in about five minutes.
it’s a great day on the intertubes today, guys!
“i was…unaware that we had that.”