Where in the World is Saura

Once the sun finally appeared after our night of pounding hail, driving rains, and high winds, we left Bluff, stopped briefly to type out the last post, then rode on to Te Anau.

Te Anau and Milford, part of Fiordland, were our next stops.  This area is gorgeous, and a definite must see for anyone who has never been.  Like much of the central and western region of the South Island, the glacial history just jumps out at you.  While we’re winding through the mountain passes carved out by ancient glaciers, waterfalls tumble down all around in thin streams.  We were told that on a rainy day there are thousands of waterfalls that almost completely dissapear within two hours of the rains ceasing.  We definitely had to see the Milford Sound (which is in fact a fiord) so took a boat tour out to the Tasman Sea.  The range of mountains on either side of the fiord follow 300 meters down to a U shaped floor.  There are a few permanent waterfalls that feed into the fiord, and on one occasion the captain brought the bow within a few meters of the falls.  They say passengers are encouraged to go and fill a cup from the falls, but this is easier said than done.  At the end of the fiord we turned around in the Tasman and headed back, stopping once to watch some NZ fur seals, and another time to drop someone off at the underwater observatory. 

Te Anau is a lakeside tourist town that offered a few excursions like a trip to glow worm caves and several boat tours.  Hikers and kyakers would also find alot to do here.  The highlight for me had to be the hot shower and laundry at the Holiday Park.  This is me with my face planted in some fresh laundry straight from the dryer…heaven.

After two nights in Te Anau we went north and west to Queenstown.  There are limitless things to do there if you have the time and the money, and although we do have time and money, we really couldn’t bring ourselves to pay for any of the adventure activities.  We considered a few, including canyoning and jet boating in the neighboring town of Glenorchy.  The guided canyoning excursion would have taken us through rivers, over waterfalls (jumping over adn repelling down), with only a minority of the trip out of the water.  The jetboating would have taken us up the Dart River, focusing mainly on the scenery (very different from the trips in Queenstown) with a short hike at the end.  Unfortunately the prices for all adventure activities has skyrocketted, and to add on that we were sick, we reluctantly passed on these.  We spent one night at a fairly large rest stop along the lake between Queenstown and Glenorchy.  We camped out by the lake, built a fire, and watched the sun set over the mountains.  One amazing thing about these mountain sunsets is that once the sun recedes over the peaks, the clouds to the east still glow radiant pinks and oranges.  We stoked the fire and watched the landscape fade as dusk washed over, with the white, snow capped peaks falling from view last.  While the fire died down, Al played guitar and I attempted to sing Bad Moon Rising.  I hate to say that there are no pictures of Queenstown or our next stops of Milford and Wanaka because my camera broke.  But we did pick up a disposable and have gotten a few nice shots since.

We didn’t do much in Wanaka besides sleep, but if you have a boat it seems like a fun place to be.  The lake was pretty clear, but Alan says it’s typically full if jet skies, boats participating in various watersport, and in hotter tempuraures, sunbathers.  The fair was in town, but we got there late in the day as the festivities were winding down.

From Wanaka, it was another long haul to Haast on the West Coast.  This is a laid back beach area, remote enough to let Saura run around again.  We drove past Haast to Jackson Bay before the sun went down.  If it were mating season we could’ve seen pengiuns there, but we were a few months late for that.

About this time we made the decision to stop back in Christchurch to board Saura, repack the van (getting rid of the things we didn’t need), and try to kick our colds that were getting worse.  We had an absolutely huge day, seeing two glaciers, driving up the West Coast past waterfalls and green lush forest covered mountains, to the beach town of Hokitika, then across Arthur’s Pass to Christchurch. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.