My parents arrived on Nov 23 for a 3 week visit. Other than my Dad's weekend visit in March, this was the first time we had seen anyone from home in almost a year! They spent the first few days around Auckland. The weather was less than perfect - windy, cool, and fairly rainy. Dad kept asking, "I thought it was going to be warm?? Isn't this summer??" Oops, sorry Dad! We did a quick hike in the Waitakeres the day they got here; it was really foggy but at least it wasn't raining!
They spent a few days exploring Auckland before heading down to the South Island for a few days in Queenstown. I joined them 2 days later and we drove over to Te Anau, the main gateway to Fiordland National Park and Milford Sound. There was a beautiful sunset over the mountains that night - this picture was from about 10pm.
The next day we did a day hike along the Kepler Track. We had lunch on the beach under a beating sun; it was such a clear day, it didn't seem like we were in Fiordland National Park! I kept remembering the downpours and strong winds that Eric and I had when we hiked the Kepler last January.
It was so clear, you could see mountain ranges on every side of you. I found a nice trail right along Lake Te Anau and did a few morning runs, couldn't beat those views!
We drove on down to Milford Sound, stopping along the way for short hikes and viewpoints. It was so different than the drive last January, when it was so foggy & rainy that Eric and I couldn't see a thing until halfway there, and then we were surrounded by waterfalls. This time, we had cloudless skies and mountains everywhere. Apparently, it was what qualifies as a drought in Fiordland - 6 days without rain! That meant we didn't see many waterfalls cascading down the cliffs, but we did enjoy some unbeatable views. Here's some from along the road:
Then Dad and I did a quick hike up to Lake Marian, an alpine lake. It ended up being a pretty tough hike, really steep with a rough trail; we were climbing up sheer rocks and clinging to roots. The view at the top was amazing though, Lake Marian was a beautiful blue/green color, surrounded by mountains on all sides. It's hard to tell how big it was from the pictures, but just to get from where we are standing down to the rocks at the lake's edge took a few minutes.
We ate lunch and then headed back down, and continued driving down to the Milford Mariner, an overnight cruise and our home for the night (along with about 40 other people). Once on the boat, we headed all the way out to the Tasman Sea, spotting a huge pod of dolphins on the way out, jumping and flipping alongside the boat. We also saw some Fiordland crested penguins along the shore, and a bunch of seals. The boat sheltered in a cove where we could go kayaking or out on small boats.
Like any other cruise, we were stuffed full of great food. That evening, we also watched a slideshow put together by the cruise director with some pictures and videos he had taken in the past year or so. He had pictures taken from the tops of many of the peaks surrounding Milford Sound (he was a big hiker/climber), as well as pictures of the Milford Road closed over the winter due to avalanches. It was a bad winter down there, with the road closed a lot more than normal, and once for 10 days at a stretch. The highlight was some video he had taken on another overnight cruise, where they had winds up to 140kph - waterfalls were going up instead of down, the boat was pitching wildly, and you could just see huge gusts of wind rushing up to the camera. We thought it was windy on our trip with pretty big waves at times, but apparently it was tame comared to what they can get!
The next morning was calm but cold. We saw a huge cruise ship - quite a few come over from Australia and go all around the NZ coast. It was a huge boat, but it looks pretty small next to all of the mountains surrounding the sound.
This is Stirling Falls, 146m tall. They took the boat right under the waterfall into the spray. This is also the waterfall in the Wolverine movie, I think it is the lab or whatever that is right at the top.
And the classic view once we were back on the shore.
We headed back to Queenstown for a few days. More on that in the next post!
And Dad at the top:
Mom taking pictures along the way:
360 degree views from the top:
One afternoon Mom and I went to the Queenstown Gardens, located on a small peninsula right by town. Some beautiful rose gardens, probably the nicest lawn bowling club ever, and a frisbee golf course (I had never seen one of those before - tons of people were playing though). Here's Mom by one of the huge old trees.
On our last day, instead of going on the LOTR tour, we drove up to the Glenorchy area ourselves. A really windy road along the lake, with lots of multiple day hikes leaving from this area. Mark this one down as a place to come back to!
Queenstown itself was great too, we had some really great dinners overlooking the lake, did some shopping, I found more paths along the water to run along. And there is so much to do - we didn't make it up the gondola, or to any wineries, or on one of the Dart River tours that everyone kept recommending. Who wants to come visit next??
