Right it seems I begin every post these days apologising bout how long it's been since I've written a proper post. So for a change I'm not going to apologise. I'm terribly busy down here and post writing takes hours you know...
So I will endeavour to bring you up top date somewhat on my travels. A brief overview, I am in Christchurch. Although I suppose you'll want to know what I've done between Queenstown and Christchurch. Quite a bit in fact so I'll start at a little town called Te Anau.
The drive to Te Anau was really nice, the road flanked on either side by rocky mountains and sometimes lakes. And briefly passing through the golden brown hills of Otago. Oh I've also realised that every time I try and describe anything here it all sounds the same. Mountains and lakes. So I reckon I may be giving the wrong impression of the land. It's all very diverse... Really it is.
Te Anau was a great place, we arrived there on a miserably rain day. So we decided we'd go to the cinema. I've really wanted to see the Imaginarium of dr parnasus(I've no idea how it's meant to be spelt). So we looked up the cinema times for Te Anau in our hostel. Which had dial up internet. Actual dial up. The kind that you can't use the phone at the same time with. It was amazing, and amazingly slow. Eventually we found that there was a cinema. It was only showing the one film, a documentary about the local area every hour. We decided not to go and see it, I think it was a terrible mistake. On another note at the hostel in Te Anau we stayed with the most horrible person I've come across in my travels. A Belgian. About 60 maybe more. It was just my group and him in the room. At 9.30, when it was still bright we were all sitting around listening to music. He comes in. Gets undressed (right down to his unpleasantly tight tighty whities). Then asks "So are you guys gonna stay around here or go somewhere else, cause I am going to sleep". None of us answered. He said "Maybe you should have thought about getting a private room". The he got up turned off the light and went back to bed. We made a point of staying there talking for a bit even with the light off. A horrible individual who I can say with absolutely no regret that I hope terrible things happen to him..
So from Te Anau we went on to Milford Sound. An epic car journey through, The Fiordland National park. The road winds through towering mountains with sheer cliff faces. When we were passing through it was raining pretty bad. You'd be forgiven for assuming this was a bad thing. Not at all, during and after heavy rainfall the mountains produce hundreds of cascading waterfalls. Some working their way down the less steep hills, others just crashing down from the cliffs. Very cool to see. Kind of thing you can imagine in a fantasy novel. Anyway the road winds along through these mountain and into a steep valley. (Again all surrounded with these waterfalls) Where it then goes straight through the mountain, there's a great big tunnel there. The tunnel only allows one lot of traffic through at once. It was here I had my first encounter with the Kea. The Kea* is one of New Zealand many very strange birds. It is the worlds only alpine parrot i.e it's a parrot that lives up in the mountains. It's a great big green thing, with red under its wings. They have no problem approaching people. And stealing things. I saw one take a woman's flip flop somehow. When you park your car you're very likely to get 5/6 of them landing on it and pecking around. I fed them some bread. Which is apparently a very bad thing to do. Luckily there was an American man there to correct me. (Who was a bit bitter I think cause when I took out the bread they all left him and he couldn't take pictures with his ridiculously over sized camera). "You shouldn't feed them you know, then they'll become too dependent on people and won't be able to fend for themselves". If only he had been around when people started feedin ducks bread imagine what a world we'd have today.
The Milford Sound was pretty cool, though not as nice as the drive to it I don't think. We went on a 2 hour cruise around it. Oh the "sound" is actually a Fiord, which is a glacier carved valley I think. Something like that. It's kind of like a great big lake linked to the sea with big cliffs and mountain all around.( You see it all sounds the same doesn't it?) The fiordland national park is also home to the Fiordland Yellow crested penguin(Or a penguin with a very similar name to that, I should probably start taking notes. Head like a sieve.) and a whole pile of seals. On this cruise we didn't see very many penguins. And the ones we did see fled almost instantly. I think this was mostly because of our over enthusiastic "skipper". Every time he saw some penguins he would steer the boat within 5 feet of them and continuously blow the horn. To "stop them jumping into the water". Now I'm no Penguin expert BUT I figure if i was a 1ft tall bird and I saw this gigantic white metal thing. Thousands of times my size coming towards me and bellowing menacingly I think I'd want to get away. I certainly wouldn't feel the urge to hang around for some photo ops for the tourists.
So after a somewhat underwhelming cruise we returned to our hostel in Te Anau. Luckily minus the dutch guy this time. The next day we set out for the much bigger(and much more expensive to cruise around) Doubtful sound**. It was much better than the Milford sound. Whole place is much more epic. We saw piles of penguins here too. And on the way back there was dolphins doing flips out of the water and such with the lowering sun playing across the mountains and water. It was like entering some kind of magical land.
Yeah so Fiordland was pretty cool. In fact probably my favourite place I've visited. The park is huge as well. Mostly unaccessible, only by boat or helicopter. Our guide informed us it's roughly the size of Wales too. So not too big eh?
*There's also a darker side to the Kea. They're known to kill sheep. I know it sounds mental but it's true. They used to be hunted here cause they used to eat farmers sheep. The parrot would peck through the animals skull, right to the brain. Kill it and then a flock of them would eat it. Madness eh?
** Doubtful sound is also a Fiord, so named because when it was first discovered the captain said "If I go in there I doubt I'll get my ship back out"
