Queenstown and Milford Sound, New Zealand

Day 70

We left Franz Joseph in the morning for Queenstown. Along the way, there was some really good scenery:

Lake Matheson. So many of the lakes around here form perfect mirror images of the sky and landscape around them. This was one of them.

Mt. Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand.

A viewpoint looking out over Lake Wanaka, along the way to Queenstown from Franz Joseph.

Some of the fields surrounding Queensland. Take away the sheep, and fellow LOTR geeks might recognize Rohan.

We arrived in Queenstown that evening, but we didn’t have time to do much, so we just visited the tourist office and booked our trip to Milford Sound for the next day.

Day 71

We left early in the morning to take a day trip to Milford Sound. This probably sounds like a broken record, but the scenery was really spectacular along the way – probably some of the best we’ve seen so far.

The Mirror Lakes. You can probably guess how they got their name, although it seems just about every lake around reflects the surrounding landscape pretty well, so I'm not sure why these are THE Mirror Lakes.

After visiting the Mirror Lakes, we came upon, without a doubt, the best-named lake in the whole Southern Hemisphere: Lake Gunn.

Being of humble disposition, I begged the government of New Zealand not to name this lake after me. Unable to ignore my historic exploits, they insisted. We stopped for a picture.

Standing in front of the aptly named lake.

Having a drink from Monkey Creek.

After leaving Lake Gunn, we continued on to our next stop, Monkey Creek. In spite of its name, Monkey Creek is actually one of the cleanest natural water sources in the world. So clean, in fact, you can drink directly from it.

After Monkey Creek, we arrived at Milford Sound, where we had a 1 hour boat cruise through the Sound:

Standing in front of the boat that would take us out on the Sound.

Almost anytime the sun broke through the clouds, a rainbow would appear over the water.

Look! A rainbow! No dummy, over here!

Waterfalls were all over the place, but this was one of the bigger ones.

Pictures just don't do it justice

After the boat cruise, we got back on the bus and headed back to Queenstown.

Day 72

We slept in today and planned to spend the whole day in Queenstown. The city park is really nice and we spend an hour or so walking through it:

A scene from the city park. The mountain range in the background is known as the Remarkables, and are one of the biggest skiing areas in New Zealand.

A bridge in Queensland city park.

Day 73

Goodbye New Zealand. We would love to spend more time here but we also prefer to never hear “Sweet as” again. We left in the morning for the airport to catch our plane to Melbourne, Australia. A parting shot of the Southern Alps from the plane window:

 

Franz Joseph, New Zealand

Day 69

Panning for gold using traditional techniques. My hands are cold.

We drove from Greymouth to Franz Joseph in the morning. Along the way we stopped in Ross, which is a still functioning gold mining town. At the gold mining museum, we paid NZ$8.50 so I could pan for gold in the traditional way. You’re guaranteed to find a few flakes of gold, as well as a piece of jade.

Jackpot! I wonder if the gold I found is worth more than $8.50 I paid to do this.

After panning for gold, we continued on our way to Franz Joseph. We arrived in time to do a half day walk on the glacier:

A view of the Franz Joseph glacier from the valley floor.

Now that our crampons are on, we ready to walk on the glacier.

Standing on top of the Franz Joseph glacier.

Ready to dig us a path out of here...

....actually, most of the digging was done by this guy, who cut steps for us as we went along.

 

Greymouth, New Zealand

Day 67

We were back aboard our hop-on, hop-off tour bus this morning on our way to Greymouth. Along the way, we got to stop at a couple of scenic points:

The highway turns into one lane here. Rather than build a tunnel, they just decided to carve out part of the mountain.

We stopped at another seal colony. The seals were not nearly as interesting at the surrounding scenery (see below).

Some of the scenery surrounding the seal colony (see above).

A scene along the Truman Track, which was a short walk through a temperate rainforest. I had no idea such a thing as a temperate rainforest even existed until this trip.

The Punakaki rocks (the English name is "pancake rocks." Apparantly, geologists are still at odds as to how exactly these formed.

Some more of the pancake rocks.

After our drive, we arrived in Greymouth, which is a pretty small, coastal town. There wasn’t much to do here, but it is the site of the Monteith brewery, one of the larger local brews. We did a brewery tour which included dinner.

Pouring herself a sampling of one of the beers on tap at the brewery.

 

Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand

Day 65

We woke up early in Wellington and boarded the ferry to cross over to the South Island. The weather was bad, but the ferry ride was pretty smooth. When we arrived on the South Island, our tour company picked us up and we drove pretty much straight through to Nelson, which is our jumping  off point for the Abel Tasman National Park. We spent most of the night packing and getting ready to leave.  Since we were going to spend the next two days walking through the park and camping, we had to leave a bunch of our stuff at the hostel.

Day 66

We took a bus to the park entrance, which was about an hour away from Nelson.  It was pretty cold in the morning, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so we really couldn’t have asked for better weather.

We had a 4+ hour walk to our campsite at Anchorage Bay. Along the way, we really got to see some of the most beautiful scenery we’d seen yet:

The temperature started to warm-up as the day went on, which was definitely welcome. Luckily, we took the advice of everyone we talked to and dressed in layers. Here are a few more pictures:

In the previous post, I talked a little bit about the possums in New Zealand and how they are considered pests. These traps were all over the track to catch them.

We arrived at our campsite at Anchorage Bay around 3PM. At first, we weren’t sure how we were going to spend all of our down time. However, once the sun went down, there was really nothing left to do accept go to bed (it was really cold). We were staying the night in one of the cabins that they have in the park, which was really nothing more than two platforms where six people could sleep across with their sleeping bags.

Well, let's just say rules are made to be broken.

Day 66

Who needs coffee? Just take a stroll through this on a winter's morn.

We woke up from our campsite around 7AM. To continue our  hike. Today, we were going to do about 5 hours to Onetahuti Bay, where our water taxi was going to pick us up and take us back to Nelson.  Because the Abel Tasman Coastal Track runs along the *duh* coast, for certain parts of it there is actually a high tide and a low tide track. However, the high tide track is significantly longer. Since we weren’t sure if we would have enought time, this meant that we had to make sure we were at the low tide crossing at the right time (plus or minus two hours of low tide). That meant we got to take a very refreshing (i.e. cucking fold) walk through a few estuarial streams left by the tide that morning.

After drying our feet and getting our shoes back on, we were off again to some more really spectacular scenery. I’ll try to let the pictures speak for themselves:

We got two treats aboard the boat back to Nelson. First was a seal colony that lives on one of the islands along the coast. Second was a dolphin that swam up next to our boat and followed us for a little while:

We arrived back in Nelson that night tired, but definitely satisfied with our trip into the park. This was definitely the highlight of NZ so far for me, and probably shortlisted for Top 5 experiences on the whole trip around the world.

 

Wellington, New Zealand

Day 64

Our bus left Taupo and headed south toward Wellington. It was a pretty long day from Taupo to Wellington, so today was spent pretty much in the bus. Along the way, we did stop at a few places that had good views of the three volcanoes close to Taupo.

One of the volcanoes around Taupo. Fellow LOTR geeks will recognize it as the model for Mt. Doom.

Another of the the volcanoes close to Taupo. It had just snowed a couple of days before we got there so they were really impressive looking.

A view from the outlook over Wellington.

We got into Wellington during the afternoon, and our bus took us up to the outlook point at the Botanical Gardens. We took a short walk around the city, but ended up going to bed early.

 

Rotorua, New Zealand

Day 63

Our bus was leaving early, and since we got in late last night, we went out early in the morning to look around Rotorua.

Rotorua and the surrounding area is famous for geysers and thermal areas that exist here. Within Rotorua, there is a city park that has tons of bubbling mud pools that was really cool to walk through. As you’re walking through the park (and even most of the town), you can really smell the sulphur coming up from the thermal pools. Sulphur smells a little bit like rotten eggs and a lot like awful.

Standing next to one of the thermal pools in Rotorua with steam coming up in the background.

Standing on a platform that walks out over one of the thermal pools.

Our bus left around 8:30 and we headed for the Knox Geyser, which goes off everyday (with a little help) around 10:15. Along the way, we had a few extra minutes so we stopped at this thermal pool.

This looks like a fake smile for the camera, but its actually a grimace from the smell of the bubbling mud pool behind me. I might never eat eggs again.

These mushrooms were growing next to the thermal pool. After Lori and I ate them, we instantly grew to twice our normal size. Unfortunately before we could take a picture, a Koopa Trooper ran into us and we returned to our normal size before jumping over a pit to safety.

After our short stopover at the mud pool, we went on to the Knox Geyser. This geyser goes off naturally every 24-72 hours, so in order to have a predictable eruption so that people can see it, one of the park attendants drops in some organic soap everyday at 10:15. This is what happens afterwards:

After the Knox Geyser, we went on to the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. This area has several geysers and thermal pools. Many of them bring up different chemicals from under the ground, and as a result, the water can be many different colors from orange to green.

After leaving Wai-O-Tapu, we contined on toward Taupo, but made a stop along the way to view the Huka Falls:

At one of our stops, a possum came up to the visitors area, which was kind of surprising since they are nocturnal and usually avoid people. Even more shocking, the workers at the visitors center started feeding it. Possums are considered a pest in NZ, as they were introduced from Australia and are responsible for endangering much of the native birds and killing trees when they strip them of bark.

We arrived into Taupo that afternoon and took a short walk around the lake front before it got dark.

 

Coromandel Peninsula, Whitianga and Waitomo, New Zealand

Day 61

Walking along Cathedral Cove.

We caught our first bus on the hop-on, hop-off service that we booked. It took us out of Auckland and on to the Coromandel Peninsula. Along the way, we got to stop and take some short, but very nice, walks at Cathedral Cove.

After our walk at Cathedral Cove, we continued on to the little town of Whitianga where we stayed the night.

Day 62

From Whitianga, we caught our bus again and went to Waitomo, which is famous for its large limestone caves that contain several glowworms. We took a short tour through the caves (too short, I thought, for the price). The tour included a boat ride where all the lights were turned out and we could look up and see all of the glowworms on the caves ceiling. Lori was shocked to learn that the gloww0rms are actually maggots. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside (it was too dark anyway for them to turn out), but looking up at the cave ceiling, you might have thought you were outside at night since all the glowworms looked like stars at night.

A view of the glowworm cave after the boat dropped us off. Inside there are so many glowworms that the cave ceiling looks like stars at night.

After our stop at the glowworm caves, the bus continued on to Rotorua. We got there late and only had about half an hour to look around before it got dark. Pictures of Rotorua in the next post…

 

Auckland and Waiheke Island, New Zealand

Day 58

We flew from Nadi to Auckland this morning and arrived around 1PM.  It also took us a really long time to get through customs. New Zealand is very picky about what you bring in with you, and that includes dirt from other places that might be on your shoes and any food that you might have with you. We spent a few hours in the tourist office and booked hop-on, hop-off bus to get us around New Zealand for the next couple of weeks. We got to the hotel around 5PM and took a short walk down Queen Street (the main street in downtown Auckland) but we didn’t have time for much else since the weather was bad.

Day 59

We took a day trip to Waiheke Island today. Waiheke Island is about a 35 minute ferry ride from Auckland harbor. Its a popular summer vacation place for a lot of Aucklanders, but there are also about 2,000 people who live there and commute to Auckland everyday for work.

A view of Auckland harbor from the ferry boat taking us to Waiheke Island.

We took a short walk along Oneru beach. The Island is pretty, but the weather was a little rough this day. However, we did see several dolphins playing in the water!

An interesting looking flower on Waiheke Island.

Day 60

We planned to go to Rangitot Island for some hiking but we were both feeling a little sick. Plus it was cold and raining. We took a short walk around the city, but mostly took advantage of the warm bed and the free sky movie channel in the hotel. I wrote a log of blog entries at the internet cafe today.

We did see on the news that there was a protest in Auckland yesterday of resitdents who want to be able to walk and cycle over a bridge in the city. Right now it’s only open to automobiles. The protesters eventually ran onto the bridge which stopped traffic for a while. This is the kind of protests this country has, to be able to ride a bike or walk instead of drive a car…it pretty much sums up the atmosphere.

 

Fiji

Day 55

Back to traveling again. Unfortunately, we have to spend the next two days on a plane. We flew from Louisville to Chicago to L.A. today, and then boarded a plane for Fiji.

Day 56

Actually, there was no Day 56. We crossed the International Date line while flying from L.A. to Fiji. Left on a Tuesday and arrived on a Thursday.

Day 57

Arrived in Nadi this morning. Our hotel provided a free shuttle service from the airport which we took advantage of.  Our hotel is right on the beach and has a nice swimming pool and bar. We spent today lying on the beach outside of our hotel. We also booked a day trip out to one of the surrounding islands for tomorrow. Fiji is really just a stop-over for us on the way to New Zealand, so we’re only here a couple of days.

Day 58

We booked a day trip to the South Sea Island. The trip includes snorkeling, a BBQ lunch, and…..free drinks. Normally, I’m not one to take advantage of a situation such as this, but today we decided to go ahead and indulge. Plus, Lori’s knee was still not up to par so we really couldn’t do that much anyways.

Standing on the dock getting ready to head out to the island.

The South Sea Island, where we'll be spending the entire day.

The island was so small, that we could see water on all sides of us most of the time. This video does  360 degrees from the center of the island. Wait for the local wildlife to show up around 0:18:

Quick! Get this guy a tan before somebody goes blind!

Some traditional dancing and signing while we ate lunch.

Its been a long day...

 

Kate and Chris’s Wedding

Day 50

We left Paducah early and drove to St. Louis, MO for my best friend Kate’s wedding. In the afternoon, Kate picked me up at our hotel and we went to Go Spa! for manicures & pedicures for some pampering and time to catch up on everything. That evening we went to Chris & Jim’s (Kate’s parents) for dinner. It was yummy!

Day 51

In the late morning, I went to a bridesmaid luncheon with all the girls in the wedding. It was at a little cottage that was so cute and had wonderful tea!

That night was the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner which were both fun and Kate & Chris looked so cute!

Day 52

The big day! It started early with all the girls heading to the salon to get our hair done. Then it was off to the hotel to get ready. We took some beautiful pictures on the campus of Washington University. Soon after it was show time! Kate looked absolutely gorgeous and Chris cleaned up pretty well too! We were all a little worried about the weather because the ceremony was outside, but it ended up being perfect.

Here are a few pics from Kate’s blog:

Chris and Kate just after seeing each other for the first time

This photo looks posed but we were really dancing the night away!

Everything was just perfect! Except – it’s embarrassing to report – at the end of the reception, I twisted my knee while leaving the dance floor. It’s my left knee which I twisted two years ago while skiing, so it’s weak anyways. So, I iced it up all night but it still swelled up pretty badly.

Day 53

We checked out of the hotel and went to Chris & Jim’s for brunch with Kate & Chris and some other family and friends. We couldn’t stay too long because we had to drive all the way back to Louisville, with ice on my knee.

Day 54

I did not sleep well at all because of my knee. I spent the day elevating my knee with some ice while catching up on Gossip Girl. Josh played golf with Mark during the afternoon. We had Wick’s pizza one last time.