South Island Days 4-5 - Te Anau and Doubtful Sound

We left Queenstown and headed south to Te Anau and Fiordland National Park.  Fiordland is full of fjords that are called sounds.  Not that it makes a single bit of difference, but the sounds were called sounds by the early Europeans.  Later geologists realized the role of glaciers in the formation of these deep sea inlets and used the term fjord to describe the phenomenon.  No one likes a J next to an F, so the Kiwis named the sound-filled region of their country Fiordland.  Go figure.  Thankfully, the sounds are awesome and don't care what people call them.

Heading south, we stopped at the southern tip of the south arm of Lake Wakatipu.  It was cold and windy, as you can see by Evelyn and Aidan's attire:

Here is a shot up the lake, showing the cloudy sky.

 Once we reached Te Anau in Fiordland, we did a short walk along the Waiau River, just south of Lake Te Anau.  We had to first cross a bridge:

Here is the river.  At this point, I think I've read claims that half the rivers in New Zealand were used to depict the River Anduin in LOTR.  This is one of them.

This was a troubling sign:

Jasper followed instructions:

Aidan got a good stick, just in case, but carried it beside him instead of over his head.

Cool ferns in a cool forest:

Here we are in the forest.  The trees were very different here than they were in the North Island.  They are called beech trees, but they didn't look like beech trees I had seen before.  I found out later they are called Southern Beech and have the genus name Nothofagus, which means fake beech.  Why does the northern hemisphere get real beech trees and the southern gets fake?  I'd be angry if I was a Nothofagus.

 Another shot of the river.  Okay, it does look kind of like the Anduin.

Here are some angry trees:

The next day, we headed out to Doubtful Sound for an overnight cruise.  First, we took a boat across Lake Manapouri.  Doubtful Sound is hard to get to.  You have to go to Manapouri, take a boat across the lake, and then take a little bus across the pass to the sound.  Here is Jasper:

 And here is Aidan and Evelyn:

 We stopped in the pass and looked down at the sound.  The sky was very overcast.

It was clearer in the sound.  Here we are waiting for our boat to come to the dock.  Ours is the boat way in the background behind Evelyn.

The boys thought the boat was awesome.  The cruise was not full, so there were only two other passengers besides us.  Here is our eating table in the main cabin.

 Here is their awesome room with bunk beds and a portal to look out of:

Jasper is happy...

 ...to see himself!

 The cruise was quite amazing.  The views were beautiful and the entire trip had a timeless quality, as if we were suspended between the ancient time of the sound's creation and the modern world.  We mostly just boated around, fishing and kayaking and enjoying being out on the deck as the walls of the sound slipped by.

It was hard to stop taking pictures of waterfalls.  I find it ironic that I have such a need to photograph a waterfall when what makes a waterfall so intriguing is the constant motion of the water over the cliffs and rocks and moss.  A photograph freezes exactly what is so entrancing when viewing a waterfall and reduces the endless shifting of water and light to a single image that can only suggest the experience of actually being in the presence of such a natural wonder.  Despite all that, I keep taking photos of waterfalls.  Here are a few that look pretty cool:

We passed some baby seagulls in their nests:

And some pods of wild dolphins playing in the sound:

Evelyn made the bold decision to kayak out into the sound with one of the crew of the boat:

That's her, disappearing into the distance:

While Evelyn tried to find her way back to the boat, I took this cool photo of a hanging valley.  The glaciers carved these valleys out of the mountains, but not all of them are full of seawater.  The ones that aren't are called "hanging."

She made it back!

We did a little fishing.  Evelyn caught a red wrasse.  Later, we ate it.  Good on ya, Evelyn!

We passed a few seals in the sound:

Then Evelyn caught an ocean perch!  The ugliest fish we'd ever seen!  Good on ya, Evelyn!  Later, we ate it.

A few more photos - pretty much every direction could have made a beautiful photo.

We pulled up some crayfish.  These are spiny rock lobsters, locally called crayfish.  Nothing I could do could prevent Evelyn from singing Rock Lobster every time we looked at these guys.  Later, we ate them.

The sun set after we anchored in a small inlet and then we spent the night on the boat in the sound.  It was very quiet.

 The next morning, the clouds filled the sound again.  It was a different kind of beautiful for our trip back to the dock.

 The dolphins caught up to us again and swam along the bow.

South Island Days 1-3 - Queenstown

Hello, Tom here.  As you probably know, New Zealand is made up of two really big islands and heaps of little ones.  We live on the North Island, where Auckland and Wellington are.  In Lord of the Rings terms, we live near Mount Doom and the Weta Workshop, where all the props were made and where all of the digital effects were created.  We also live near Isengard and Helm's Deep.

The South Island is known for its especially dramatic scenery, particularly the Southern Alps, New Zealand's highest mountains and a very long range that covers the entire length of the island.  The landscape is quite varied, as Christchurch lies in the Canterbury Plains to the east of the mountains in the north part of the island, the mountains themselves run along the ocean to the west for much of the range, creating amazingly dramatic sights, deep fjords cut into the mountains at the very southern tip of the island, and the Central Otago plains stretch out in vast prairies to the southeast.  LOTR-wise, the Southern Alps are the Misty Mountains under which Gandalf battled the Balrog, the Canterbury Plains are the site of Edoras, and Otago is a whole lot of things, particularly the Westfold and Ithilien.

We hadn't visited the South Island before, but parents were visiting, so we planned two trips in January, one with each set.  First it was the Chus, who we met in Queenstown before they flew out to Australia and we continued on our own through Fiordland and Otago.

As soon as we landed, I was taken by the remarkable mountains surrounding Queenstown.  In typical British fashion, these remark-worthy peaks are named The Remarkables.  I took this foolish photo in the parking lot of the airport:    

Queenstown is a very cool little town.  We stopped in what became my favorite coffee shop, Vudu, for a quick lunch.  Here is Jasper at lunch, showing you that he believes in justice, but he does not believe in necks.

Queenstown is on the shore of Lake Wakatipu and the views of the mountains are simply beautiful.  Here is proof:

Here is the view from our hotel window.  That brown hill across the water is Kelvin Heights.  Aragorn was dragged by a warg off the top off that hill.

Here is a nice photo of Evelyn enjoying the beautiful scenery:

Here is a crazy photo of daybreak on a cloudy day over the Remarkables.  Feel free to make this your desktop.

A photo with Gong Gong and the boys.  Jasper nailed it.

Another coolio mountain shot around Queenstown.

We took a gondola up to the top of a nearby peak so that we could look down on the lake and Queenstown.  Here is a beautiful photo of mother and son.  Jasper nailed it.

The view from the top.  That's Queenstown at the bottom, the Remarkables at the top, and the place where Gimli was nearly crushed by two dead wargs in the middleground.

At the summit, there was luging.  Here is Aidan and Gong Gong on the lift to the top of the luge paths.  Fun for all!

At a museum in Arrowtown, a little gold-mining settlement near Queenstown, we found a giant piece of jasper.  Jasper posed beside the jasper.

Another shot of the mountains and the lake.  I took a lot of these.

And at sunset.

 
The next day, we decided to drive up the northern arm of the lake to a place called Glenorchy.  The day was cloudy and a little rainy, so the mountains were hard to see, but there were still some beautiful views.  The mountains just looked a bit more mysterious:

Here I am with Mrs. Chu out on a walk.  See those beautiful mountains behind us?

They loomed out of the mist.  It was pretty cool, actually, though not the picture-postcard scenes that most travel to Glenorchy for.

Slowly, the mist and clouds started to lift.

Bam!  Suddenly, it was a beautiful day.  We stopped in Kinloch for lunch and took this photo from the northernmost part of the lake.

Here is a cool photo of the clouds blowing over the mountains.

An arty photo of Aidan at lunch.  I call this "Still Life with Water Glass, Boy, and Woman on Phone."

The mountains after lunch across the long dirt road we drove down.

A shot of Evelyn about halfway down the northern arm of the lake.  The color of the water was really cool.  The lake is glacier-formed and snowmelt-fed, so it is an odd shape and a fascinating color.

Another two at the edge of the lake on the way back to Queenstown:

Saying goodbye to Gong Gong and Po Po in Queenstown.  Jasper nailed it.