Travelog for: Knopf

Abel Tasman Coast Track is one of New Zealand's Great Walks, a 51km, 2-3 day walk, but I decided to take the watertaxi to Bark Bay and walk from there to Anchorage to get picked up again by water taxi, walking the middle and most interesting part of the way.

Bark Bay

Tree Fern



Falls River Swing Bridge

Several small or long detours lead to look outs or small bays or Cleopatra's Pool.

View over Frenchman Bay



View over Torrent Bay: all the way to the left in the back is Acnhorage, at low tide it's possible to cross Torrent Bay Estuary to get there, and some people tried because it looked kind of possible to wade through the water and over the sand, but there were deeper parts that even had boats driving through so they had to give up. The way around the bay was quite a detour and I had a boat to meet.

Here I am at Lake Rotoroa in Nelson Lakes National Park.


There are big eel and quite aggressive ducks and swans around here. Not an ideal place for a picnic but a good view down the long lake.

Cape Foulwind according to James Cook or Rocky Cape according to Abel Tasman, but Cook as much more moody when naming things, lived up to its name today.

Hard to see, but: seals!

I braved my life for a pictures with a curious weka, a flightless bird:





It bit my paw!

I made my way down the west coast of the South Island along very windy coastline with incredible tides and a nomber of blow holes.


A highlight were teh so called Pancake Rocks:


You will get wet on the path due to the blow holes, look at that water:



and the fine mist on top:



I ended the day at a beach, waiting for little blue penguins to come to shore. I didn't see any despite being very quite, but the beach was so long, I might just have been in the wrong place.

Franz Josef Glacier, or in Maori:  Kā Roimata o Hinehukatere ("Frozen tears of Hinehukatere") is a glacier on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand and is special because it's at a low altitude, relatively fast flowing (up to 70 cm per day) and still lengthens and shortens cyclicly, which you can see by just comparing different photos from different decades in the last century. I walked up the Waiho Loop where the glacier flows towards the sea:


Even here there are still ice caves below the moraine,



The local Maori, Ngāi Tahu, tell the origin story of the glacier: a strong woman, Hinehukatere, climbed the mountains with her lover Wawe who was then killed in an avalanche. Her tears of sorrow ran down the mountain and were frozen by the gods, forming the glacier.

This was supposed to be the famous mirror lake view of Mt Cook. But as you can see Mt Cook was hiding in the clouds...

After driving through amazingly beautiful mountain landscapes, I reached Lake Wanaka:


Many Kiwis seems to have a summer home here. I was just in time for some fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day.

This is Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge where A.J. Hackett tested the first specially made bungy rope and established the first commercial bungy jumping site. One can still jump here and choose if and how far to immerse in the water.



My day ended in beautiful Queenstown:

The morning started out early to travel through the amazing Fjordland National Park.

This time the mirror lakes kept what their names promised:







I met some wild Kea! a group of Kea is calles a circus and for good reason because these super intelligent mountain parrots will open bags to steal food or "toys". I was being very careful around them after my experience with the weka.





(Good thing, too, this one was serenely cleaning itself a second ago!)



This part of the river is calles the "Chasm"





 

And finally, famous Milford Sound:



with waterfalls erupting from the sides:





 

Bluff is the southern-most town in New Zealand, at least if you only count the North and South Island.



From the I took a trip through the very south of South Island, including the Catlins, which are supposedly good for wildlife watching.





Found some: huge, luckily lazy sealions









Unfortunately I didn't see any of these fellows:



But I did find some hidden gems:





and some curious ones:





All of the actually move if you turn the handles.

 

This is Nugget Point:









The movement of the water was very hypnotic.
 

The Otago Peninsula is very beautiful and a great place to view wildlife.
First I did a little cruise to see Royal Albatross. They are so big and lock their wings and just glide on air. There's a centre close to their breeding grounds btu viewing is very restricted right now during breeding season.



Then I saw some young Hooker's sealions play fighting on a private beach reserve.




And yellow eyed penguins! Some of them were sitting on nests and not to be disturbed but this one was just hanging out. It seemed still young, so no very yellow feathers, yet.

And of course New Zealand fur seals:

I visited the steepest residential street in the world:

On my way back up north I spent a nice day hanging out around Queenstown and going for a long walk.

Several lakes formed after the retreat of glaciers on the eastern side of the mountains that have the beautiful turquoise water. Lake Pukaki is one of them.

Lake Tekapo is another one of those and has some nice small lodges and camping grounds nearby as well as an observatory of the souterhn sky. Unfortunately there's a lot of cloud cover, so even though the area doesn't allow light pollution, clouds plus a full moon prohibited a good viewing experience. The night was also somewhat interrupted by an earthquake even though I felt very little of it and only heard about all the damage it did near Kaikoura on the news the next morning.