News from South Island
Hello from Queenstown- I guess that’s an appropriate place for a girl from Queens.
First things first, I just spent hours on flickr.com trying to figure out how to send my pictures and post them. I still have no idea but my flickr name is myranee. Let me know if that works out.
I plan to download (upload?) my pictures from New Zealand in the next week. I keep putting it off because I still don’t know what I’m doing and the effort just makes me feel dumb. Is downloading pictures onto a computer/the web an innate skill these days? something you’re born with? Arrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!
So, news from South Island. I started off in Dunedin, a very cute little town in the southern part of the island. It’s a big college town, but college is on summer break right now. Took two day tours (seems most of what I do involves a tour group, something I did about 3 or 4 times total in my 2 years of traveling in Europe and South America), one to the Otago peninsula and the other on the Taieri River Gorge Railroad. Both were excellent and well worth the money, but I am getting very tired of the 8 am pickup followed by the get on here, get off there….
The scenery on South Island is unbelievably gorgeous so I took a whole batch of pictures traveling along the Otago Peninsula, and that was before we got to the penguin sanctuary. They are breeding/protecting the yellow-eyed penguin, very large and apparently very rare. They have built these underground sheds so that you can get up close and personal without scaring the birds. You will see just how up close when I deal with pictures again. I skipped the visit to the albatross center, not a tremendous bird person although I heard it was good, and the last part of the day was a cruise out past the end of the peninsula and back to Dunedin harbor. (You will all recall that NZ is comprised of 2 big islands so most of the big cities are on a harbor.) We saw seals(they kind of lay there and didn’t do much), and more birds, but mostly it was just a really beautiful day and it was nice to be on the water.
I seem to have hit a good weather karma at the moment. It rains on my travel days and the sun pours down like honey (musical reference for those of you too young to recognize) on the touring days.
The railroad trip was also great. Basically it’s a railroad to nowhere at this point but the views are terrific.
Then off by bus to Te Anau, the nearest “big” city to Milford Sound- one of the top tourist draws in NZ.. Soaring cliffs, snow capped mountains, rushing waterfalls (from the drenching we had the night before) and a tranquil bay off the Tasman Sea. How many different ways can I say gorgeous? The trip back was not uninteresting either. One of the tour buses caught fire and burnt to a crisp. The good news- no one was hurt. A sweet young Dutch couple lost eveything, including all of the pictures they had taken in the past 4 months of traveling- I know this because they came onto our bus. They had burned CDs and each had 1 CD in his or her backpack, which seemed like enough backup until yesterday. Lesson here is I am downloading onto the internet and have decided to burn a CD as well and mail it home.
And now for my most “interesting” news. I will be celebrating my birthday on Sunday here in Queenstown and my birthday present to me is a skydive. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, she has absolutely lost her mind. On the other hand, here in NZ it seems rather normal. I’m signed up for 3:30 on Sunday, so I have until 3:30 tomorrow to back out at no cost. Don’t think I will- it was the last thing left on my “things to do before you die” list so I think I’m going to do it.
I have also decided to give hostels a whirl starting next week. You can get a private room in most so I think I have to make this great sacrifice for economic reasons.
That’s it for now. Keep your fingers crossed for Sunday.
Myra
Tags: Dunedin, Milford Sound, New Zealand, Queenstown, Te Anau, Travel
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