Fiordland/Southland
Sunday, December 7th, 2008The next day I awoke to what sounded like a hurricane (or what I assume a hurricane could sound like) with gale force winds and rain battering the hostel. So much for going kayaking. Went outside and looked around, what I saw amazed me. The amount of waterfalls on the surrounding mountains (which I initially had thought mind blowing) had just about doubled. An absolutely incredible site.
Driving out of the area we passed many more waterfalls that weren’t there on the drive in. It’s really hard to describe the feeling of being surrounded by mountains that are covered in waterfalls pouring into the valley. Never seen anything like it. 7 1/2 meters of rain in a year has it’s benefits.
After leaving fiordland, we headed to the South coast. Stopping en-route at some undeveloped public caves that ran for several hundred meters underground and had a good walk/crawl around down there. Some cool mineral formations and lots of glowworms!
As soon as we reached the South coast the wind speed went up a few levels, standing on the top of some cliffs there facing directly into the wind coming up from the sea was a similar sensation to sky diving, albeit not as extreme. The very thought that it made me think of sky diving says something though. Good thing the wind here was accompanied with blue skies and not the sheets of rain from earlier in Fiordland.
Adam