Last day in New Zealand.

We made it through the tropical rain from Franz Joseph to Greymouth and caught the Transalpine Express train to Christchurch.  A note about the weather….. it “poured” nearly all the way to Greymouth.  At times I could barely see through the windshield, which is not a good thing in the twisty, mountainous roads out of “Glacier Country” and into the coastal region. 

 We arrived in Greymouth with plenty of time to spare, dropped off the car and walked a short distance to the train station to get our tickets and check the bags.  With the rain still coming down from time to time, we walked through the town and found a lunch spot with Wi-Fi access and caught up on a little email and world news.

 The train came right on time, but the fog and rain obscured the countryside.  After an hour or so of the 4+ hour ride, the viewing started to clear a bit and improved thereafter.  By the time we reached Arthur’s Pass, the only direct, west-to-east route over the alps at this point, the weather improved significantly.  For the next couple of hours we saw wonderful scenes of mountain tops, trestles over gorges thousands of feet deep, 15 tunnels cut through solid rock, alpine meadows and pasturelands and various other scenes.  There were even a few towns—very few, obviously at this altitude and remote location.  At one point the “guide” pointed out the remains of the original dirt road used by the horse-drawn carriage to transport passengers from one coast to another—many years ago, of course. That must have been some journey under those conditions. A paved road currently exists for vehicle traffic, but gets closed frequently due to weather conditions.

The sight that intrigued me the most was the vast fields of gravel and boulders (from baseball-sized to watermelon or even VW bug-sized) accompanying the many rivers down the mountain side.  At bends in the rivers, the gravel accumulates into huge fields or “washes” as one traveler described those— many of them hundreds of yards across and extending for miles before, during and after the curve of the river is completed.  I can only imagine the amount of water it took to drag this amount of rocky debris down the slope.  One of the local folks we met recently commented on the sound that the rocks make at night, as the water pushes them over and over down the gorge.—especially during the spring floods.  

 The mountains soon gave way to broad pasturelands filled with sheep and cattle, and before long, acres (and miles) of lush green fields of vegetables and other crops.  As the train pulled into the station, we experienced a vague sadness that this part of our “downunder” experience was over, but this was pushed aside by the memory of the many awesome scenes and activities over the last ten days.  I am sure that I will have more to say about this after we get home to Rhode Island.

Now we sit in the Christchurch airport, waiting for our plane to board.  It stops in Wellington, then on to Sydney.  Tomorrow we catch the Qantas flight to the US and home and are looking forward to sharing these many scenes and experiences with our family and friends in person.

 

April 13, 2012

 As you can see from the date above, we are already back in the US, but there is a little catching up to do on the our final few hours in Australia.

We arrived promptly in Sydney and took the shuttle to a nearby airport hotel—the same one where we stayed after the thwarted Great Barrier Reef trip a few weeks ago.  We got a beer in the hotel “pub” bar and retired early—knowing what the next day of travel might bring.

We arrived at the Sydney airport again around 11:30am on Thursday morning and went through the various

immigration and security checkpoints.  For some reason the airline changed our intended seats on the plane placing each of us in an entirely different row.  The Qantas representative at the check-in kiosk managed to re-seat us into economy “premium” seats—an upgrade that provided quite a bit more space and comfort than we would have experienced with the original selections.  The plane, one of those mammoth two-deckers, soon loaded up and by 2pm we were on the way eastward to Dallas/Fort Worth.

 Not much to say about the ride, but we were quite comfortable and presented with food and drinks several times over the next several hours.  We arrived in Dallas at around 2 pm the same day (after a 14-hour flight) then headed for the 6pm flight to Boston.  To make a long story sort; we stuffed ourselves into 2 regular “economy” class seats and arrived in Boston at about 11pm—again still Thursday.  I report this, not to bore friends with the details of international flight, but to call attention to the fact that all this travel (some 20+ hours) took place during the same day.  I think this is just another example of this time-disorientation/time-travel that I experienced from time to time during the course of the trip. 

 Everything worked out ok, though and the driver we booked was waiting Logan airport with a nice, gray Lincoln Town Car for the trip home.  So we spent roughly the next hour practicing all our Australia/New Zealand stories on him—sort of a rehearsal, I think, for what might happen when we get together with friends and family over the next few weeks.

The Franz Jospeh Glacier

Monday April 9, 2012

We got up reasonably early and started out for Franz Joseph, a small resort town to the northwest of here (5-hour drive) with a glacier of the same name. The day started out foggy but cleared as we headed into the foothills and mountain valleys to the north. Soon we found ourselves in one of those wonderful New Zealand valleys with lush, green pastures filled with sheep and farmlands spreading out on both sides to the foothills, then onward to the craggy mountains.

That lasted about an hour; then we hit with twisty-turny mountain roads
heading up over the mountains to the north and the west. It also began to rain lightly, but enough to slow us down during the 35 kmph switchbacks along the way.

After about another couple of hours, we approached the western hills and eventually the coast. We were able to get a good glimpse of the beaches along the way—mostly dark sand
scattered with driftwood brought in by the roaring surf. I even stopped to get my friend, Brick, another sample of New Zealand sand—this time from the western beaches facing the Tasman
Sea.

Leaving the beaches we began a long climb through a remarkable tropical forest—again with all the windy roads and astounding views into the valleys and river gorges below. We finally reached Franz Joseph at about 3:30pm and checked into our hotel. The town is about 3 or 4 blocks filled mostly with motels, restaurants, shops and tourist services—like glacier
walking. It was too late for a guided tour, but we soon took off for the Franz Joseph Glacier access trail—about 4 km further up the hill.

The first part of the trail consisted of a ½-mile trek on foot through a tropical rain forest. The
trail opened onto a huge expanse of rocks and boulders cut, from top to bottom, by a roaring stream—obviously from melted glacial ice. The glacier lay ominously at the furthest reaches of the open ground—about a mile uphill--curled up as if ready to spring and baring its teeth of ice and grit dragged down from the highest elevations of the mountain towering above.

Linda and I walked across the marked path among the loose rocks and boulders. Finally we reached a place where we could look directly into the giant maw of the glacier. It held the blue of the ice and the sky above—with almost a supernatural glow from inside. I, of course, wanted a
closer look, so I climbed up another rocky hill and got a more face-to-face introduction to our ancient friend. I wasn’t close enough to get a good estimate of the thickness of the ice, but it
must have been 20-30 feet—probably more. What I could finally see was the body of the glacier, stretched out behind up and up the mountain side—as far as the eye could see. I quickly came to realize the immense power of this phenomenon and what it must have been like eons ago when still young and raking down the mountainside with those icy claws.

I rejoined Linda and we made our way back across the rocky field and through the tropical rain forest trail in the dimming light. It is more than just a “pun” to note that the Franz Joseph glacier became one of the many “highpoints” of our travels downunder.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is a transition day with a 2-hour drive to Greymouth on the western Pacific coast and a 4 ½ hour Trans-Alpine Express train ride eastward over the alps to return to Christchurch. Soon we will fly to Sydney and after an overnight stop continue our return home.

Happy Easter from New Zealand

April 8, 2012 Easter Sunday

Happy Easter Sunday everyone! At least it is Easter here; not in the US for another several hours. We wanted to wish you all a wonderful day anyway. I will probably give an update for today in Queenstown, but not until this evening or tomorrow—depending on our schedule.

On the road to Queenstown

Saturday, April 07, 2012

Our next venue is only 2 ½ hours drive from Te Anau; so we decided to take an easy morning without rushing. Finally, after a superb egg, bacon and cheese pie at the local breakfast place (plus a “long black” coffee for me) we got on the road and headed toward Queenstown.

We backtracked for about a half-hour to Mossburn; then headed north to Queenstown. The fog
gradually lifted and gave us another perfectly beautiful day to view all the sights. Queenstown is north on a parallel track with Milford Sound but the two are not connected by road. Again, we found ourselves in the grips of two mountain ranges—on the east and west. This situation was reminiscent of the road to Milford, but we knew now what to expect.

Few towns appeared on the road to Queenstown, at least until we arrived at Kingston. A large billboard notified us about an historic coal locomotive, the Kingston Flyer, on an exist to the left. We turned in, but soon discovered that we already “missed the train,” but it was available just 5 Km or so down the road at the other local station. While we were there I took the opportunity to
tell the young woman in charge of the station about the Kingston Trio at the University of Rhode Island. Their most famous song was about “Charlie on the MTA; the “man who never returned.” She seemed to appreciate the story (or was extraordinarily polite); so we said goodbye and got back on the road.

Just as she predicted, we found the Kingston Flyer just a, few miles down the road. It was a
beautiful, black, coal-fired locomotive just backing up to a row of five or six equally-antique passenger cars to make the run back to the other station.

Soon we got back on the road and finished our travel to Queenstown. The motel appeared just at
our entrance into the town; so we decided to check in and unpack a bit.

After a short break, we decide to walk down the hill into town (about 10 minutes) and find out what’s happening. It was clear from the traffic that this was not sleepy little alpine town. People and cars filled the streets and created a kind of “activity” that we last sensed in Dunedin and Melbourne. We found a local pub housed in an old courthouse for a quick snack then continued to explore the town.

Almost immediately we decided to take advantage of the gondola ride to “Bob’s Peak”—how could I resist a name like that? The peak rises a couple thousand feet above the town and offers a fine restaurant, bungee jumping, multiple hiking trails, the “luge” (small low- slung carts traveling on a cement track down the mountain side), various kinds of hiking, helicopter rides and not to be forgotten, tamden paragliding rides (instructor and rider who jump off the cliff into the wind on an overhead “chute” and glide back and forth downward to the landing base in the town below. It was amazing how the chutes moved in the sky over the town and lake (Lake
Wakatipu) below. We spent the remainder of the afternoon observing activities on the peak; the made the return trip to the bottom and short walk (except uphill this time!) to our hotel.

More about Queenstown tomorrow!

Te Anau and Milford Sound

April 6, 2012
Friday

We got a reasonable early start in the morning and arrived in Te Anau (which means something like water swirling in cave—a reference, some believe to the glow worm cave just across the lake from the city) in mid to late afternoon. The city sits on the shore of a huge and beautiful mountain lake, by the same name, and consists primarily of the lake shore drive and the central business district (CBD in NZ “code”). We took a slightly wrong turn into the town (routine for us, on occasion) and arrived at a naturalist center. We parked and decided to take a walk along
the lake front to unwind after our drive, observing the distant mountains, lovely lake-front hotels, airplane and helicopter flight services and other tourist travel arrangement center—plus quite a few restaurants and bars.

The hotel was just around the corner, as it turns out; so we soon got settled in our room and began looking for a place to get a cold beer and dinner. We found “the Moose” just around the corner (not that many corners in Te Anau); described in the travel brochures as a “regular Kiwi-style grub” so it seemed like a natural.

By the way, the trip from Dunedin surpassed all our expectations about the diversity and beauty of New Zealand’s environment. I should just write up some incredibly poetic expression about the loveliness of the countryside, but my best effort would still not do it justice. We saw
everything from rolling hills to broad plains, forests of stately pines, rivers and lakes, broad green pastures and hills made golden from autumn grass. We kept saying that nothing could exceed the sight we just saw when another more impressive one came into view. It makes me think that we should all live in New Zealand, just for the beauty of it! A “young traveler in a local breakfast shop recently put it best. “New Zealand,” he said, “is like a giant theme park where all the wonderful attractions and sights are put into one place.” I couldn’t say it any better than that!

Today’s drive to Milford Sound provided another example of the beauty and diversity of the countryside. We got started early to complete the 2 ½ hour drive for the 10:30am boat ride and drove north for about 30 minutes when the fog started to lift and we found ourselves embraced by mountains on three sides. And these were real mountains—probably 2500 to 3000 feet high or more! They seemed to literally hang over the road as we wove back and forth in a zig-zag pattern through the rising landscape. By the time we drove for a couple of hours, the mountains seemed to edge closer until we faced what literally seemed to be a horse-shoe shaped wall of cliffs in the front. As we got closer, we saw a little black hole in the face of the cliff—the Homer Tunnel, carved out during the Great Depression years to give automobile access to the Milford Sound area. It extended 1.2 Km through the mountainside and came out onto several miles of steeply-sloped switchback road leading into the Milford Sound area.

Apparently Milford Sound is really a “fiord” like in Scandinavia. Fiords are mountains carved
out by glaciers then filled by seawater. “Sounds” refer to the mouths of rivers, sunken by seismic activity (earthquakes) then filled in by seawater. According to the guide on our excursion boat, the water in the Milford sound is about 700 meters deep—so deep that the skipper was able to edge a full-hulled ship (about 200+ feet long) right up to the waterfalls, “seal” rocks and other attractions without any concern about running aground.

The excursion lasted 2 ½ hours and covered most of the main attractions: waterfalls, highest peaks, overhanging cliffs, etc. One of my favorites included the exit from the mouth of the sound; then a turn-around to see the opening from the Tasman Sea side. The whole thing looked like a simple fold in the cliffs facing the ocean. That may be the reason why Capt. James Cook entirely missed it during two or three exploration voyages up and down the western shore of New Zealand, the area now known as “Fiordland.”

We stopped several times during the drive back to Te Anau to check on several of the “designated scenic views” (more mountains, lakes, rivers, exotic plants and …did I mention mountains?). When we arrived in Te Anau, we discovered an unexpected Kiwi policy of serving alcohol during holidays ONLY when serving meal; so no stopping in for a quick beer before getting a shower and dinner. We managed to work through that situation and ordered some food with the beer which seemed ok with us.

Tomorrow we head to Queenstown and some new adventures.

A visit to Dunedin

April 4, 2012

We left the “Hermitage” early this morning and started the long trek south to Dunedin—on the southeastern coast of the New Zealand’s south island. After saying “goodbye” to Mt. Cook, we traveled again along beautiful Lake Pukakai then through the town of Twizel (pronounced Tweye-zel according to the local gas station attendant).

By the way, this was the most expensive tank of gasoline I ever purchased; at $4 per liter, it cost nearly $90 for ¾ of a tank—and that was in a Toyota Camry!. But given the distances between gas stations in this area, we decided that it was better not to take a chance. Besides, gas is just as expensive everywhere else!

Linda and I decided that this place has the most beautiful and varied scenery of just about anywhere we have ever been! We passed green hills crowded with sheep and cattle; then lakes with the most incredible blue water and coastal hills; then mountain foothills-- golden with long autumn grass; then river gorges thrashing with translucent, blue water and bordered by wide shores of gray gravel and football-sized stones. And it just kept coming!

After a couple hours of driving on the familiar 2-lane roads at 100km/hr; and through several medium-sized communities (at least for here) we decided to stop at a tourist attraction…a place called Moeraki Boulder Beach. After a short walk down a gravel path and a few stairs to the beach, we saw what appeared to be huge egg-shaped stones littered across the beach and surf.
We don’t mean chicken eggs either; these were definitely dinosaur-sized eggs with a few more than 5 feet in diameter!

It definitely offered an interesting break from the driving. Also I stopped to scoop of a half-cup of sand for my friend Brick, who collects sand from all over the world. Apparently the South Island of New Zealand is one location missing from his collection.

After the Moeraki boulders we headed the last few miles into Dunedin and found ourselves in the midst of a georgeous and hilly Scottish town. Apparently, Dunedin (pronounced
done-KNEE-dinn) thrives on its Scottish heritage and offers many churches, public buildings, hotels, private residences, parks and other attractions reminiscent of places we previously
visited in Scotland, years ago.

After settling into the motel, we walked down the main street to observe the local culture.
Apparently there are several universities in the area, reflected by the many youth-oriented cafes, stores, music-video shops and other establishments lining the busy streets. We noticed a beautiful white building along one street; it turned out to be the local train station—a real
traditional monument to the time of its creation. We went inside and found the architecture as
lovely and timeless—with long halls of arches and elaborate ornamentation over the doors and particularly along the railing of the mezzanine above.

Walking only a few minutes further, we discovered the First Church of Dunedin, a gothic-style Presbyterian church built soon after the town’s establishment. Surrounded by a lush, green yard, it seemed to offer just the kind of focal point and source of strength and quiet that a small community would need—so far across the sea from home.

Next we decided to visit the local brewery—Speight’s Brewery. It was closed, so we opted to
visit the brewery bar instead—not a bad option, I might add on a warm autumn day—at least here it is autumn.

Tomorrow we head for Te Ananu, a community on the Milford Sound area of the southwestern
coast of New Zealand. Obviously, we are in for more panoramic vistas and wonderful experiences. So after taking a few moments to update the blog and other tend to email obligations, we will soon begin to wind down the evening and look forward to tomorrow.
Still, we wish we had more time to explore Dunedin—a place that feels more like home than many places we visited thus far during this trip.

April 3, 2012

Welcome to New Zealand!

We arrived in New Zealand yesterday evening (Monday, 2 April 2012) at Christchurch around 6pm, picked up our car and headed out to the hotel on Panpanui Street. Thrifty didn’t have another CPS device available; so we got a good map and eventually found our way. The hotel even had a hot tub (albeit a smallish one); after a dinner of pizza and beer, we took a dip and then settled in for a long, night’s rest.

We intended to get an early start this morning (April 3, 2012), but didn’t get started until about 10am. The hotel breakfast was expen$ive, so we swallowed our pride and got a “Huge Kiwi Breakfast” at McDonald’s (they are everywhere in Australia and New Zealand, it seems. In the process, we learned that McD’s often provides Wi-Fi access for free—useful information for
the days ahead. (Most hotels charge $5 for a half-hour or hour of access; it always makes me angry.)

Several of our friends visited Christchurch previously and gave enthusiastic reports of its beauty and charms; so we decided to take a look for ourselves—in spite of the reports about the earthquake damage. Sure enough, we entered the City Center and found ourselves confronted by one dead end after another. Finally, we parked the car and tried to explore the area on foot. After about ahalf-hour with no success, we stopped at a gated construction zone and asked a
young soldier on duty about ways to view some of the sights—even at a reasonable
distance. He pointed out a couple of things down the street, like the Christchurch Cathedral now hunkered down without a steeple or windows. But he wasn’t at all encouraging about seeing much of anything and advised us to explore other areas of the city, or the country instead. So that’s what we decided to do.

We finally got on the road and headed out of the city on route 73 (later to become route 72). Today’s objective is Mt. Cook, a 12,316 foot mountain in the Southern Alps region of
New Zealand (near the western side of the south island). The route, known as the Southern Scenic Highway, passed through several small towns, such as Geraldine, Fairlie and
Lake Tekapo—the latter of which offered the Church of the Good Shepherd, a lovely little one-room chapel perched on the very bank of the alpine lake, with turquoise water surrounded on three sides by foothills of the incredible mountain peaks forming a solid line across the northern view of the lake. Without a doubt, this drive was one of the most beautiful we have ever seen, with the views changing from evergreen forests to agricultural fields stretching into the distance, to green covered hills falling over each other in a jumble and dotted with sheep, cows and yes, we
even think we say herds of domesticated deer in a couple of places.

Finally we rounded a corner and caught our first sighting of Lake Pukakai, a long, turquoise body stretching from the road for several miles to the very foot of Mt. Cook. We stopped numerous times to take photos and capture the beauty and grandeur of the towering mountains, but the camera never seemed to do it justice. As we approached our destination, a local hotel complex known as the “Hermitage” we found ourselves fully in the mountain’s presence. There it stood with a white crown of glacial snow shining in the late afternoon sun.

Later, as the sun set, the mountain top turned pink then rose-colored and draped with similarly-tinted clouds blowing across its shoulders. According to one of the staff at the hotel, the
ability to view this kind of show only occurs a few times a year—if that! We thought ourselves very fortunate to be here at just one of those rare moments.

Tomorrow, on to Dunedin…..!