We are now at Milford Sound in Fiordland (so named because of the fiords) on the West coast of the South island. We have the chance to post some other pictures from the scuba diving and our more recent activities. Over the past week we've been driving for maybe 3-4 hours each day, and after flying South we have now traded our Nissan Bluebird (essentially an old Sentra) for a Hyundai Getz (Accent). The roads across both the islands have been surprisingly curvy so far, with many 'highway' corners that require speeds of 50 km/h or less. Yet, the speed limit rarely changes from 100 km/h, which is unattainable in many areas. $2 per liter gas means that a fill-up runs $65, but we are at least in fuel efficient cars.
Earlier this week we stayed at our first B&B, a small converted Post Office that was cheap and where we were the only guests. The highlight of the stay was the backyard, which was full of trees with ripe peaches, plums, and apples (pictured), representing supplements to our dinner and breakfast. The day before that we stopped in a kauri tree forest and saw the largest living kauri tree, 14 meters in circumference and around 2000 years old.
Skip ahead 2 days. The caving in Waitomo was wild and exhausting, after climbing into our wetsuits, harnesses, and white boots, we rappeled (called abseiling here) 100 meters down from the opening to the bottom of the Lost World cave. This was a long way down.
At the bottom, we met one of the many eel inhabitants of the river we'd be walking through. This one was two feet long and we saw maybe six others through the trip. After that it was climbing, crawling, wading, swimming, and squeezing through the rocks and river of the underground limestone cave system, with no natural light. At one point we all turned off our headlamps and were directed one by one to jump through a hole in the cave floor ahead of us . . . into a large pooled are in the river. Temporarily scary.
One of the features of the cave was that many parts of the ceiling are covered with glow worms (fungus gnat larvae) that create thousands of green specks of light on the ceiling in some sections, and were bright enough to lead us without our lights in one spot. The total time underground was 5 hours.
From Waitomo we drove to Rotorua, an area famous for hot springs. I think they had 4 or 5 paid hot spring viewing options but we went with the free (and massive) public park 50 yards from our hostel. There was an impressive amount of bubbling and steaming (pictured) and the sulphur smell was strong enough to linger in the air across much of town.
From Rotorua, we drove back to Auckland and flew to Queenstown. Milford Sound is probably 50km from Queenstown as the crow flies but we took the 300km circuitous route since roads aren't built over many of the mountain ranges down here. Like the other parts of New Zealand, the countryside is scenic and loaded with sheep and cows, but we now have the addition of farmed deer, huge mountains, and mountain parrots called keas.
Earlier this week we stayed at our first B&B, a small converted Post Office that was cheap and where we were the only guests. The highlight of the stay was the backyard, which was full of trees with ripe peaches, plums, and apples (pictured), representing supplements to our dinner and breakfast. The day before that we stopped in a kauri tree forest and saw the largest living kauri tree, 14 meters in circumference and around 2000 years old.
Skip ahead 2 days. The caving in Waitomo was wild and exhausting, after climbing into our wetsuits, harnesses, and white boots, we rappeled (called abseiling here) 100 meters down from the opening to the bottom of the Lost World cave. This was a long way down.
At the bottom, we met one of the many eel inhabitants of the river we'd be walking through. This one was two feet long and we saw maybe six others through the trip. After that it was climbing, crawling, wading, swimming, and squeezing through the rocks and river of the underground limestone cave system, with no natural light. At one point we all turned off our headlamps and were directed one by one to jump through a hole in the cave floor ahead of us . . . into a large pooled are in the river. Temporarily scary.
One of the features of the cave was that many parts of the ceiling are covered with glow worms (fungus gnat larvae) that create thousands of green specks of light on the ceiling in some sections, and were bright enough to lead us without our lights in one spot. The total time underground was 5 hours.
From Waitomo we drove to Rotorua, an area famous for hot springs. I think they had 4 or 5 paid hot spring viewing options but we went with the free (and massive) public park 50 yards from our hostel. There was an impressive amount of bubbling and steaming (pictured) and the sulphur smell was strong enough to linger in the air across much of town.
From Rotorua, we drove back to Auckland and flew to Queenstown. Milford Sound is probably 50km from Queenstown as the crow flies but we took the 300km circuitous route since roads aren't built over many of the mountain ranges down here. Like the other parts of New Zealand, the countryside is scenic and loaded with sheep and cows, but we now have the addition of farmed deer, huge mountains, and mountain parrots called keas.
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