Postcards from Australasia #21

We woke to a crisp late summer morning in Wellington, making it down to the Interislander ferry terminal just after sunrise:

On the trip across we saw our first White-capped Albatross:

We enjoyed unusually calm seas on the crossing, notorious for being rough, and arrived in the Marlborough Sounds on approach to Picton:

Having enjoyed a bit of sunbathing we awoke the next morning and drove to a car park to start the 'snout' walk, as the morning cloud burned off:

It was peak cicada season:

Not the best picture but the number of empty shells show the scale of the emergence.   They landed on our packs, our arms, our faces.   Quite scratchy but soon persuaded to fly on:

Gorging on the fallen insects, was this Weka, so full and slow i could take this image with my landscape camera, up close:

At the highest point on the trail, on the return leg we saw the Interislander making its way into harbour:

The next day we joined an E.Ko tour into the sounds looking for some of the rarest wild birds in New Zealand, the King Shag, which we did indeed see, alongside these Hector's Dolphins, on the verge of being made a species of their own even though there are only 40 animals in this group:

Logging of the adjacent hills is their biggest threat currently, because the soil washes into the Sounds, obscuring the bottom of the sea bed where they feed.   We also saw New Zealand Fur Seal, this one swimming around near our boat:

And, on the return trip, a Little Blue Penguin:

From Picton we drove to the Golden Bay area, stopping at a viewpoint to take a snap:

The bay area itself, including farewell spit, was oddly closed/disfunctional, we couldn't really do much of anything we wanted so we did a bit of exploring and then headed back out again.   This is the view of the valley as we climbed the crazy steep 'hill' that is the pass out:

We headed down the coast before climbing into the Western Highlands, stopping at various spectacular coastal locations on our way south:

Including the 'pancake rocks' at Punakaiki:

We ended the day in Arthur's Pass walking up the Otira track in a fruitless search for Rock Wren, the views however were spectacular:

Though the main bridge marking the end of the regular trail, and the start of the mountaineering section, was a little tenuous:

We left Arthur's Pass after just one night, while it is spectacular the accommodation is rubbish and with almost no sleep we couldn't handle another night.   Instead we pre-extended our stay in Haast and drove via a stop at the Viaduct Overview, to see the Kea:

You can see how the 'fighting' of the pair below reveals the colour in their plumage, which otherwise is ideal bush camoflague against avian predators:

We hunkered down in Haast as it rained about 4 inches in a day-and-a-half, emerging on a dry morning to head further south towards Fiordland, the views on the drive South were stunning:

Queenstown in particular is a worthy tourist hotspot though we only viewed it in passing:

Helen took a few snaps of the landscape along the way:

In Fiordland we had to make some decisions.   A prior cyclone had wiped out the road leading to Milford Sound, another tourist hotspot, so we changed our boat booking to Doubtful Sound and instead drove in as fas as we could into the National Park, stopping for example at Mirror Lakes:

The landscape is truly spectacular.  This was a nice spot for a cup of tea for example:

We did a few walks including nature trails, meeting this confiding South Island Robin along the way, amongst many other of the endangered bird species of South Island:

The Doubtful Sound trip came around, starting with a sunrise over a misty inland, high-altitude Lake Manapouri:

Before heading into the sound proper:

Right at the end of the sounds, as you emerge into the Tasman sea, there's a colony of the now recovering New Zealand Fur Seal, including a healthy number of youngsters, back from the brink of a hunters extinction:

The dawn in Te Anau on our last morning was worth getting up early for:

We stopped for some fuel and this caught our eye, thoughts turning slowly but surely back to home as the adventure of a lifetime heads towards its own conclusion:

From Te Anau we drove to Invercargill on another cloudy Autumnal day, checking out Bluff, our departure point to Stewart Island and the last part of our New Zealand adventure.