Around the South Island

Our final week on the South Island was a bit crazy. We drove a ton, took a cross-country train, and stayed in four different places. Nonetheless, we continued to enjoy the beauty of New Zealand.

Our week started with a drive from Queenstown to Dunedin (pronounced du-nee-din) on the east coast of the country. On the drive we stopped at the only official curing rink in the Southern Hemisphere; seriously, the week after we were there, the rink hosted a match of the Australian national team. We enjoyed learning about how to play curling, but with just the two of us, it was essentially a big game of shuffleboard. By the end, we were cold, but had gotten the hang of the game.

In Dunedin, we stayed at a farm, which had many animals including sheep and alpaca, but the cutest by far were the ducklings (there were 11!), who liked to converge together in a pile of cuteness.

Dunedin has some interesting architecture and many large murals on buildings but overall was not all that interesting, yet its location on the Otago peninsula in a deep inlet off the Pacific Ocean is spectacular.

We visited the Orokonui Ecosanctuary, which is a place that is trying to protect the native plants and wildlife of New Zealand. It turns out that most of what we are seeing as we travel around are invasive species of plants and animals brought by both European settlers and, to a lesser degree, the Maori people who arrived in the early 14th century. Some of the biggests pests are the rats, stoats and possums brought by Europeans, which have decimated many of the country's flightless birds. Orokonui is trying to bring back the native ecosystem, including the Takahe, which is basically a big, blue chicken.

We were fortunate to be there late in the day, with very few people around because the Takahe tend to be shy birds, but we were able to see all four of the ones in this part of the park, and observed them for several minutes.

We also saw several other native birds including the Bellbird (on the left below) and the Tui, the latter of which makes clicks and whistles that sound like R2-D2. It is very strange.

We took a walk through a forested area that contained only native species of plants, and is a good example of what New Zealand would have looked like 1000 years ago.

Continuing the theme of animals, which has really dominated our visit to Austalia and New Zealand, we took a tour to see the very rare (and very shy) yellow-eyed penguins. Unfortunately, we did not see these animals. But, the tour was not a total loss as we did see several Blue Penguins in their huts (you have to look carefully in the photo) and some playful fur seals.

In addition, the location of our tour was an absolutely gorgeous beach on the long penninsula that is the inlet where Dunedin is built.

On the same day we took our penguin tour, we went to see the beautiful, but hard to access Tunnel Beach. On the way is this fantastic rock formation.

The beach is small and peaceful, and there was a seal lazing on one of the rocks (black blob on the left in the picture below). Getting there and back was a bit harrowing as the tunnel to the beach is quite narrow and low.

After leaving Dunedin, we drove back to Queenstown and caught a flight to Christchurch. After an overnight there, we caught the Transalpine train, which crosses the southern Alps to the west coast city of Greymouth. Although the trip was really beautiful, we have to admit that it did not have quite the "wow" factor that we were expecting; maybe it is because the mountains are just not that high. Still it was a very pleasant journey.

Greymouth itself was not too interesting, but after a night there, we set off on a long drive to the northeast side of the island -- a town called Blenheim in the Marlborough wine region. Our first stop along the way was a really cool spot along the west coast called the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks (you can see why particularly in the bottom picture below).

Our second stop was at the longest swinging bring in New Zealand. Set over a beautiful river, the bridge seems sturdy, but it moves quite a bit, and you can see through it below your feet. I admit, it was a bit tough to cross, but we made it and enjoyed a nice nature walk on the other side before braving the bridge again.

When we arrived in Blenheim, we had just enough time to go to the Omaka Aviation Heritage Center, which contains many examples of planes from WWI and WWII (we only had time for the WWI section) -- both original and full-scale models. The Center is supported by Peter Jackson (director of the LOTR movies) whose special effects center has provided extremely life-like manequins for some of the scenes depicted there. For example, the final flight of The Red Baron:

In addition, the Center houses several planes and life-size models of planes from his personal collection. This plane looks more like a flying boat with its sail-like wings. It did not have a long career in the war, but looks very cool.

This small museum in the middle of New Zealand has ended up with a lot of memorabilia related to aviation in WWI thanks to Jackson, and it was really interesting seeing what they had, and reading some of the stories around this relatively small part of the war. One of the most interesting things to me was the number of different planes that flew in WWI. It was a time of a lot of experimentation with many people on both sides trying to come up with the best combat plane.

The Marlborough region is New Zealand's biggest wine region so, of course, we had to do a wine-tasting tour. We chose to do a bicycle tour that had us with a guide in the morning, and on our own in the afternoon. We had beautiful weather, and really enjoyed tasting and riding, although we definitely felt a bit limited in how many tastings we could do while still remaining upright on our bicycles. (Yes, that's a vintage scooter at one of the wineries, not the bikes we rode.)

Finally, we note that we have now reached the part of New Zealand that has a much larger Maori influence, especially the North Island. In our hotel in Blenheim, the owner had left a deck of cards with Maori vocabulary. The language, which is definitely related to Hawaiian, seems as difficult to learn as Euskera.

And that was our crazy last week on the South Island. On to Wellington.

Ka kite wawe koe (see you soon).

Jeff and Shana