New Zealand - Invercargill (Curio Bay's Petrified Forest and Yellow-Eyed Penguins)

What a day! I got to satisfy my not-so-secret penguin fetish, see a petrified forest, and find some tessellated pavement. Yes, tessellated. Tessellated. Giggle! I do love saying tessellated so was pretty excited to have a good excuse to start saying it again since it's been a long time since our Tasmania trip.

It was a rather long drive to Invercargill as we first had to go over the Cardrona Range, past Queenstown, drive south along a long, long arm of Lake Wakatipu, and then keep driving south seemingly forever until we hit Invercargill. From there, we had to head towards Fortrose and then Curio Bay is past that "a ways". Unfortunately the sign to Fortrose in Invercargill (or any other burg in that direction) seemed to be missing so we powered right on by the road towards Fortrose. The map we had was not too terribly good in the detail department which was working decidedly to our disadvantage. We got to where we could see what we thought was Bluff in the distance and realized we had to have missed the turn somewhere. Bleah! It was a long enough drive without adding any extra kilometers to it. So much for being in the information age because we sure didn't have enough of it.

After we righted our ship and topped off with petrol, we found the right road and headed that way. We had an appointment with some penguins and we were not going to miss it! The last umpti-ump kilometers of the drive were gravel, but I didn't mind because we were heading toward penguins. There was, however, a voice in the back of my head saying something about "not being happy if there aren't any penguins". Oh wait, that was not in my head. That was behind my head. It was A.J., and others in the car were adding their agreement. Oh please let there be penguins because, apparently, petrified forests do not qualify as awesome enough to justify hours of driving!

We finally got to Curio Bay, jumped out of the car, and headed for the beach. When we got to the shore we discovered it was quite nippy; not at all like our beach at home. We wandered around enjoying the petrified forest, the tessellated pavement (well, maybe that was just me), and the beauty of the ruggedness there. Definitely a very cool place, but the thing on all our minds was no surprise... penguins.

As it started teetering towards dusk, we found our penguin lookout on a very conveniently located rock formation. I like how one of those two is always watching the water. We hadn't been at that post very long at all before we spotted one. Yippee!!! I had the most wonderful time watching the penguins. We ended up watching three before we called it a day. I took lots and lots of shots of these guys although somehow I managed to miss getting a shot of an epic penguin fail pulled off by penguin #2. He tried to hop up a ledge that was a bit too high for him and then fell over backwards onto his back. He immediately got back up, shook himself off, and successfully tried a ledge that wasn't quite so tall. At no time did I see him looking around to see if any other penguins had seen his gaffe like so many of us humans would do. I guess maybe penguins are secure enough in themselves that they don't care what other penguins think of them.

The penguins we were seeing were the pretty rare yellow-eyed penguins. They only live in New Zealand and they are just plain awesome! They come into shore after a hard day at work with take-home pay of whatever they can fit into their stomach. They're greeted by their mate who has stayed home all day to guard the chicks and then the breadwinner of the day feeds their little ones from their "take-home pay". The next day the parents reverse roles and do it all over again. This goes on for six weeks until the chicks are old enough to babysit themselves. After that it takes both parents "working outside the home" to keep their teenagers fed (sound familiar?).

I delighted in watching them waddle up towards their rookery and taking some pretty seriously big hops up the ledges. They're much better hopper-uppers than I would have thought. About halfway there, he/she started doing the "Honey, I'm home." call. Yes, this all was way up there on the happiness scale for me.

I eventually tore myself away, but it was admittedly hard. I wanted to stay and watch penguins arrive all evening, but if had, I'd have been walking to our next destination. We had planned Milford Sound next so we were heading to Te Anau to spend the night and then launch for Milford Sound from there. That would be assuming the road to it was open and hadn't encountered a landslide like it had a day or two before.

We had quite a day for sure. To add to all those amazing things, it was also the farthest south any of us have ever been. I had mistakenly thought I'd never get any farther south than we were in Tasmania, but I was definitely wrong. We beat it by a few degrees even. Curio Bay is at about 46 degrees, 39 minutes, and 43.2 seconds south for those who want the nitty-gritty numbers.

New Zealand - Mount Cook and Clay Cliffs

The weather was supposed to be clearing up for the 27th so we thought we'd make the drive to Mount Cook. Mount Cook is the highest peak in New Zealand at 12,316 feet and, while we weren't going to climb it (heaven forbid!), we could at least take some close-ups of the monster. We took Highway 8 over the what's-its-name pass (there are a lot of them) and then made the turn toward Mount Cook. This road goes along Lake Pukaki for a very long way until it turns and runs along the massive moraine area. Lake Pukaki is beautiful, a stunning shade of aquamarine, and, by employing my keen sense of deduction, clearly quite cold. The pictures definitely don't do it justice.

As we got closer to Mount Cook Village we noticed that it wasn't clearing up at all. It was, in fact, starting to snow. Oh well, at least we weren't washed out again. I'm not too sure how being snowed out is any better, though. We decided to enjoy some fine beverages at the cafe and admire the view of an obscured Mount Cook. I took a picture of it, but you have to use your imagination (or find one on the internet that doesn't have 12km of snowfall between you and it).

The only problem was, when I got back home and had access to the internet, I found out that I was not even aimed in the direction of Mount Cook when I snapped the shot. It was more like Mount Sefton. Ooops! No matter, we're using our imagination anyway so it's all good.

It was snowing noticeably more by the time we left the cafe. Snow is a funny thing. We could have taken the road to Hooker Lake which is right at the end of one of the glaciers coming off Mount Cook so I could have taken an even better white-out shot of Mount Cook. But, the nagging plausibility of not getting out of there unleashed its magnetism on us and we were inexorably pulled towards the road back.

Lake Pukaki was still beautiful driving by it in the other direction. I'll definitely give New Zealand credit for an inordinately large number of massive and scenic lakes.

We stopped at the Clay Cliffs on the way back. The entry fee to the Clay Cliffs is $5 since they're on private property and it's completely on the honour system. You're just supposed to stop at the iStore and pay which is exactly what we did.

The Clay Cliffs are comprised of some cool rock formations, but we didn't contemplate them too terribly long as it was darn nippy out there with some wind thrown in as an added bonus. I was too busy snapping pictures to let the coldness get to me so I was the last one back to the car. On the way back to the car I had a look at the view away from the cliffs. It reminded me strongly of Scotland and the climate's about right, too.

Things didn't go quite the way we planned, but it was still another very picturesque day.

New Zealand - Arrowtown and Dunedin

The weather wasn't predicted to be very cooperative on our second full day so we decided to stay more local. The pass over Cardrona Range was open - yes, it snowed, but not too much - so we headed to Arrowtown. Arrowtown is an old town - like 100 years older than me which means it's nearing relic-hood. Arrowtown, next to the surprisingly named Arrow River, was sort of the gold mining hub for the big piles of gold that were found in the gold rush years. Arrowtown is now a nice town of shops and restaurants. We checked out their "stuff" and then started scoping out places for lunch.

We ended up choosing "The Stables". Much to Amber's and A.J.'s delight, they had WiFi. Now would be a good time to retract my "WiFi junkie" label of the previous post. I have been admonished for overstating the reality. We ended up eating upstairs and had a lovely lunch in the hay loft.

We then went by the famous bungy place. We watched someone jump and decided it looked like fun, but we'll never know if we'd have actually done it or not because it was just too dear at around $200 a jump.

We headed off and checked out another old town, Cromwell, on the way back to Wanaka. It was along a man-made lake. Like they need another lake on the South Island! Yeah, well, maybe hydroelectricity makes more sense.

After getting back to Wanaka we did our "advance" planning for the next day. We quickly realized there were no more "close" destinations much to the dismay of our excellent driver, Mr. Eric. In spite of that, we decided Dunedin and the royal albatrosses were a must see. One sleep and a four hour drive later, we rolled into Dunedin and worked our way up the Otago Peninsula to the Royal Albatross Colony. The time of year we were visiting meant we might not get to see any in flight, but soon after we hit the car park we saw one in the distance so we were greatly encouraged. They have unmistakably huge wings. That happens when your wingspan is around 10 feet. Yes, 10 feet! That's some serious wow factor!

To be most exact about what I was crossing off the "cool critter in the wild list" would be the hybrid northern royal albatross entry. Hybrid because they have a little southern royal albatross mixed in (just who was that ancestor with the wandering eyes?!). What I find equally entertaining is the northern royal albatrosses live only about as far north as the rest of us down under dwellers. North is clearly quite relative.

We did the tour and got to see the albatrosses a lot closer up. Eric tried to get a bit too close to investigate a picture behind some display glass and bonked his nose on it. No big deal except it also made quite the bonk noise which stopped the tour guide in mid-sentence. All eyes swung to him and Eric did all one can do in that situation, shrug and give them your best sheepish smile. Oh, if only I'd had the camera at the ready for that moment! He did the best sheepish grin ever! Yep, we got a lot of mileage out of that one. Since he's my favorite, I will say it was clearly caused by the effect of all that driving on his vision.

Speaking of vision, we also got to see a few more critters that I went ahead and added to my list. New Zealand fur seals and spotted shags are also southern hemisphere dwellers. The spotted shag (also called a Parekareka if you like syllabic challenges) is a type of cormorant only found in New Zealand. Wow, it's like a gold mine of cool critters! The light wasn't so hot so the picture just doesn't do them justice.

There were also blue (fairy) penguins on that peninsula, but like Tasmania, the penguins don't head for shore until dark and waiting for them would make the day way too long. Reluctantly we headed back while I consoled myself that I'd already seen fairy penguins in the wild. That and I'd crossed three things off the critter list in one day! Yes, it was a good day!

New Zealand - Washed Out in Wanaka

You know how really big hit movies have delayed releases in other countries? Let's just pretend this post is like that except it's not big, it's not a hit, and it's not a movie. It just might have something to do with there being no internet on our New Zealand trip and I didn't feel like writing anything if I couldn't post it. I am not too proud to admit that not having internet was a serious blow. I know I was not alone as Amber and A.J., also known as the WiFi junkies, were always looking for a WiFi fix. How do I know this? For the first time ever, they were always willing to go to the grocery store because that was one of the few places where they could find WiFi. Nuff said.

We were ready and raring to go on Thursday the 24th after arriving at the resort late the previous evening. We thought we'd drive the road the resort is on to the very end and then hike up to the Rob Roy Glacier lookout. About 10 kilometers in, the road became gravel. It also became a great way to check the condition of one's fillings.

We trundled along quite nicely enjoying the scenery - lots of waterfalls, peaks playing peek-a-boo in the clouds, and sheep pastures galore. All the spring lambs were way cute. There were cows and their calves around, too, but they just don't got it on the super-cuteness scale. Everything was going along swimmingly until we rounded a bend and discovered... well, an impediment would be the nice way of putting it as you can see.

We hopped out of the car to investigate and soon discovered swimming was the only option. That would still be going along swimmingly, but it would definitely be losing something in the translation. Our very first foray and we were washed out. Drat!

We decided regrouping was in order. We thought we'd drive up to Treble Cone which is a nearby ski area and have a look at the view up there. Closed. Double drat! Okay, how about trying the Diamond Lake hike we saw on the way out? We actually got there and walked up far enough to see the lake and, whoops, down comes the rain. We decided a re-regrouping was in order as hiking in the rain didn't really sound like much fun to me (yes, I'm totally a fair weather hiker).

We went back to the resort, ate lunch, and decided the weather was improving enough to try to go up Iron Mount. Success!!!

What a relief to know we weren't a washout at playing tourist. Um, maybe I spoke a bit too soon.

We headed towards Lake Hawea and thought we'd go to Haast and the west coast.

Lake Hawea was beautiful, but a slip (aka landslide) on the road to Haast meant we couldn't make it there. Washed out again. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.