Cruising Fjordland National Park (Milford Sound)

Fjordland National Park is a little slice of Heaven.  It's crowning view is called Milford Sound.  These fjords are special in that they have marine life, rain forest, mountains, and a glacier all in one place.  It might be the only place in the world that can claim that.

At sea, en route to the national park.

The unique part of our time in Milford Sound was that it was sunny.  It rains there nearly every day and the clouds don't allow you to see the tops of the mountains.  We were very fortunate.

Entrance to Milford Sound.

Just inside the entrance.

Some of the cliff walls seem to come straight out of the water.

Some seals.

Lady Bowen Falls.

Snow peaks in the distance.

This view is just to give some perspective to how close the ship is to these mountain walls.

Port Chalmers (Dunedin), New Zealand

We had such amazing weather the whole trip 60-70 degrees and sun each day, we were bound to have a dud eventually.  That was this stop, Port Chalmers and Dunedin.  When we got off the boat it was 78 degrees and sunny - sweaty hot.  So we were wearing shorts and short sleeves.  We brought extra clothes for Hazel, but not ourselves.  60 minutes later it changed to 50 degrees, windy and lots of rain.  Yay!  But we had already taken the 45 minute bus ride to Dunedin, so Ashley and I were freezing and wet.  We ate lunch and walked around for just a bit.  We tried to catch a bus back, but had to wait over an hour for it to come.  So we spent some time in Cadbury World, sampling some of their candy.  We had three kinds:  Turkish Delight, Dream (white chocolate), and Chrunchie.  They were all nasty.  Seriously, I would have rather eaten black licorice.

Dunedin did have a nice train station though.

























A church in Port Chalmers, during the brief window when it was nice.

Akaroa, New Zealand

Akaroa is possibly the most beautiful place we've ever been.  It sits in a large forest valley (formerly a volcano) with an opening to the sea that was created by a volcanic eruption over one million years ago.  From overhead it looks like a blue hand and fingers grasping a wrinkled green blanket.

Overhead taken from Google Maps

The view from the beach.

After a lunch of fish and chips, we boarded a bus to visit a family-owned alpaca farm. When we arrived, they had some of the babies in a pen so that we could see them up close, and then lead them out to the pasture by leash.

A baby alpaca or paca, as Hazel calls them.

View from the alpaca farm.

One ugly paca.  He makes good fleece though.

One of the pretty babies.

Family photo.

Anya and Frank, the owners of the alpaca farm.  They used to live in the Caribbean and decided to move to New Zealand to become alpaca farmers when their children started to get older.

Deep Thoughts by Hazel.

Hazel advertising alpaca fleece.

View of the valley from a windy road.  

Picton, New Zealand

Picton is a very small town, so small we were shocked the ship could even dock at its port.

Picton's harbor.

View of the town from the Tirohanga Walkway.  This was a nice hiking trail.

Another view, this time from the beach area.

More Cruising

Many of these cities and towns sit in what are called "sounds."  A sound is deep, usually narrow body of water between land.  The sounds of New Zealand are usually in steep valleys or between mountains, making them especially pretty.  Many of these sounds were created by the filling of large dry valleys with water.  Ancient earthquakes would crack these valleys allowing seawater to seep in.  This also helped create many of the fjords in New Zealand.

Some random pictures while cruising Captain Cook Ship Cove and Queen Charlotte Sound...

Wellington, New Zealand

Known as Windy Welly, and should adopt the motto: "Our wind will punch you in the face."  Holy crap it's windy there.  It is the capital of New Zealand and sits on the southernmost point of North Island (New Zealand is two large islands, try and guess the name of the other). 

The Beehive.  Unique and ugly.  A government building of some sort.  It sits next to the Parliment building and other government buildings.

Neat little door handle.  

Old St. Paul's Church.  

This US Marine flag hangs inside Old St. Paul's Church to commemorate the help they gave New Zealand during WWII.  

These wooden "gingerbread" row houses on Tinakori Road are neat to see.  They sit near the US Embassy, where I got in trouble for taking pictures.  

An alleyway between Terrace Road and Lambton Quay. Terrace Road runs parallel to and sits some 100 feet or so above Lambton Quay. We had to take an elevator down about a dozen floors to get down.

The Te Papa Museum of New Zealand houses Maori history and artifacts.  The Maori tribe was native to New Zealand when Captain James Cook first visited New Zealand in 1769. At first the British just wanted to exploit New Zealand's wealth of natural resources, but eventually so many British subjects were buying land and settling in New Zealand that the British Government decided that they had to take action. Major wars occurred between the two groups until the Maori finally surrendered and signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. This sounds familiar to another country's history.  At the museum, there was a huge exhibit on this treaty, and the controversy that still exists between the Maori people and the British crown.

A waka- a Maori river canoe.  

Napier, New Zealand

Napier is a pretty port town with an interesting history.  In 1931, it was struck by a devastating earthquake that made rubble of the city and took many lives.  Many injuries were caused by pieces of buildings falling on top of people.  In response, the town rebuild with nearly flat building fronts, and decorating in the art deco fashion.  We're talking art deco to the extreme, but neat.  Many of the buildings have awnings now. 

Fountain right on the beach front. 

A "Christmas tree" as nicknamed by New Zealanders.  It will keep changing to red over the summer.  It was the beginning of summer while we were there, being in the southern hemisphere. 

The Masonic building. 

View of the town and the Public Trust Building.

Municiple Theater.

This old car is sitting in a pretty pedestrian area.

The Daily Telegraph.  

Tauranga (Rotorua), New Zealand

Our first port of call was Tauranga, New Zealand.

Mt. Maunganui in Tauranga

This port is considered an access point for visiting Rotorua, known for its thermal activity and Maori presence, so we booked a tour to check it out. Our tour guide provided us with a lot interesting information as we made the scenic drive from Tauranga to Rotorua:

• Kiwi growers plant tall hedges around their crops in an effort to block PSA disease...there is a ban on the commercial sale of trout in New Zealand to preserve recreational fishing;
• Maori sculptures are never made in the exact likeness of a human (often with three or four fingers, never five), because God is the only One who can make a perfect human;
• Tauranga was the site of the last battle between the Maori and British troops;
• Rotorua's population is more than 30 percent Mauri, larger than the national average (16 percent);
• Tourists once visited Rotorua to see the famed pink and white terraces, but a volcanic eruption in the 1800s destroyed the terraces and killed more than 100 people; 
• The Redwood trees in Whakarewarewa State Forest Park are two to three times the size of other same-age Redwoods around the world  because the lack of winter season in New Zealand allows them to grow 12 months of the year, etc.

While in Rotorua, we visited Kuirau Park to see some steaming, boiling pools of mud, and walked alongside Lake Rotorua. We missed seeing the prettiest wood building in all New Zealand (The Bath House Building), only catching a view of it on our bus as we were leaving.  No picture, not happy.  In hindsight we should have stayed in Tauranga and skipped the 90-minute (and expensive) bus ride to get to Rotorua.

If you look closely, this Maori sculpture only has three fingers.

We'd never seen black swans before.  Nor did we know they were aggressive.  The Asian tourists did not heed this warning.  Three of them lost limbs.  

The MV Rena, a shipwreck a few miles off the coast of Taurunga.  You're thinking old right?  Nope, this is a 1,800 container ship that smashed into the Astrolabe Reef on May 5, 2011.  This is such a large accident that New Zealand is still figuring out what to do.  There was a big oil spill as well, which had been cleaned up by the military and port authorities before we got there. 

The shipwrecked MV Reva.