South Island!

It's taken a while - two years, in fact.  But finally I've managed to get (back) down to South Island.
We've had quite a few guests stay with us, who then drive the length and breadth of South Island and come back with 'have you seen?' and 'what did you think of..?' questions.  And each time I've had to say 'Dunno; only been to Blenheim/Picton and driven through Nelson to the Abel Tasman for a night...'  (which, as any self-respecting tourist to New Zealand knows, is not really 'South Island' at all.)

The real South Island is rugged, wild, mountainous - and uninhabited for the most part.  Blenheim, in the heart of the northern Marlborough district, is vineyard country, and primarily on flat land.  Unlike Queenstown, which is where we flew last week.  Time to celebrate those 32 years of marriage I mentioned the other day.  A little late, but it was the first weekend we were both free to travel.

Thursday afternoon we landed at Queenstown airport and collected the hire car.  Given that we are no longer in our 20s, and tend to prefer a good night's sleep to a night on the town, we headed straight for Arrowtown for our first night.  It's only about 20 mins or so north east of Queenstown, but what a difference.  It's much smaller, quieter, and altogether more 'us'.  Reminded us of Keswick, actually.  Arrowtown began life as a gold-rush community in the 1860s.  And it's managed to retain much of that old-world charm (though whether it was 'charming' at the time is another story!).  One main street through the middle, a beautiful avenue of oak and sycamore now nearly 150 years old, some small, original clap-board buildings and, if you take away all the cars, you could imagine the horses riding up and depositing their owners at the stores and bars....Yes, we liked Arrowtown, nestling as it does at the foot of the mountains.  We chose a good time of year to visit: in high season the normal population of 3000 rises to nearer 7000 - the population of the town at the height of the gold rush ....

[Buckingham Street, where everything happens]

[The 'Avenue of Trees' which appears on so many Arrowtown postcards]

The following day we walked up Tobin's Track for 35 minutes for a good view of the valley:

[Arrowtown nestles in the valley]

Then we drove back through Queenstown, which sits at the side of Lake Wakatipu, and offers every kind of adrenalin rush you could possibly want - and probably a few others beside (definitely in my case).  We stopped briefly on Lake Esplanade, because the views were simply too beautiful to pass up:

[Looking back at Queenstown]

Then we headed off to Te Anau.  The drive takes around 2 hours, and the snow-capped mountains are ever present.

[Looking across Lake Wakatipu to Half Way Bay]

Te Anau, known as the gateway to Fiordland, sits (not surprisingly) at the edge of Lake Te Anau, the second largest lake in New Zealand.  [Taupo is the largest.]  The town suffers in some ways because so many of the tours to Milford Sound go by coach from Queenstown and bypass Te Anau altogether.  Plus enterprising (greedy?) developers bought up huge chunks of land around the edge and built the requisite residential roads, but have managed to sell only a handful of sections for houses (and pretty unimaginative bungalows on the whole). So there's a random, sporadic feel to the newer bits.

[Lake Te Anau, with evidence of some boating, which pleased Roy]

An early start was needed to get to Milford Sound the following morning, to beat the inevitable traffic. It might only be 120km but it takes nearly 2 hours nonetheless, and that's without stopping. We duly set off at 0730.  The guide books say that the drive to Milford Sound is as spectacular as the Sound itself.  They're right!  There's a bit of everything - lakes, tree tunnels, wide alluvial plains, rivers, and of course mountains, sometimes a way off and sometimes really up close and personal. 'Dramatic' doesn't begin to describe it. Enhanced by low clouds, occasional rain, and wisps of mist, the atmosphere was compelling and at times threatening. I found myself saying Mordorrrrr quite a bit at odd intervals; in fact I half expected to see a horde of Orcs descend the mountains at any time....

[See what I mean?]

The road to Milford wasn't built til 1952; before that you had to get there by boat, or on foot.....  But they pushed through the mountains with the Homer Tunnel, and made it possible for countless coachloads of tourists to access the Sound every day - unless the road is closed, of course, which happens a lot in winter when the snowfalls, avalanches and landslips routinely occur.  It was shut the week before we arrived: we saw evidence of the huge landslip which nearly took out a bridge.

Eventually we arrived at 'The City of Milford', so named by Donald Sutherland (yes, a hardy Scot) who was the first settler in 1877.  Beware the sandflies, we were told.  I came prepared, luckily.  Insect repellent applied we boarded the Lady Bowen for our 2 hour cruise and slipped quietly into the Sound.

It isn't actually a Sound at all: it's a fjord (or, as they have it here, a fiord).  There's some technical distinction to do with glaciers and sea that I wasn't too sure about; something to do with its being a drowned glacial valley, rather than a river valley. Anyway, I now know it should really be Milford Fiord.  But it isn't.  What it is is more scenes of dramatic cliff faces, which rise up to 1200m, some sheer, some covered in gravity-defying pohutukawa and bush; there are seams of minerals and gold; there are waterfalls, seals and Fiordland Crested penguins, which we glimpsed fleetingly (though sadly no dolphins on our visit).  And pretty much nothing has changed in thousands of years.  Captain Cook never entered it, the entrance being nicely camouflaged from the Tasman Sea.  It's a piece of timeless, savage beauty.

[Sinbad Alley in the distance; a helicopter circles]

We also paid a quick visit to the underwater observatory and saw some black coral (which is white).

We stopped a couple of times on the way back to sample some of the recommended scenic stops:

[The Chasm, where crystal-clear water pours down the mountain side

 and eats its way through the rocks; the photo doesn't do it justice]

[A Kea; one of three we saw in the car park. They're the world's only alpine parrot, 

now protected, and only found in South Island]

[The Mirror Lakes.  Apparently on windless days you get excellent reflections.

This was not a windless day]

 Then it was back to Te Anau and a loooonnnnnggggg bath with an excellent book:)

Another early start on our last morning meant we were in and through Queenstown in time to go up the eastern side of Lake Wakatipu to Glenorchy, a small unpretentious community at the head of the lake, from where several of the mountain tracks begin.

[Lake Wakatipu, on the way to Glenorchy]

[You can see Pig and Pigeon Islands near the top end of the lake]

After a Fairtrade organic coffee at The Trading Post, we strolled to the edge of the lagoon, and back.

[Thought there should be one of the two of us together, in Glenorchy :)]

 We picked up an Israeli hitchhiker en route back to Queenstown, a professional photographer taking a sabbatical.  He's offered to show us round his kibbutz should we ever find ourselves in Israel.  Now there's an offer...

As we arrived in Auckland I looked out of the 'plane window and said (rather lamely), 'It's so flat - and populated...'.  Which it is - compared with South Island, anyway.  Joe Bennett had it about right: it is indeed 'A Land of Two Halves'.