Nobody likes to lose a mitten.
The only parrot to have adapted to living in high mountain conditions is the Kea Bird in NZ. It can be up to 50cm long and weighs up to a kilo... It also has a very strong, hooked bill. Now, here's the interesting bit: part of the adaption was to learn to mob sheep, en masse, and use their powerful bills to eat the fatty flesh around the sheep's kidneys! It doesn't kill the sheep who can tolerate it but subsequent infection etc is often a side effect, hence farmers used to be able to shoot the parrots until they recently became protected. Amazing.
So heading towards Fiordland was yet another incredibly scenic journey, arriving in the 'gateway' town, Te Anau. All very pleasant there. En route, I skirted through the edge of Queenstown but did not bother taking a look beyond that. Te Anau is a very pleasant, lakeside town full, basically, of people heading for Milford or Doubtful Sound. My plan was to drive up to Milford and then, the day after, take a boat trip from Te Anau to see Doubtful.
The drive to Milford Sound, as those that have done it will know, is both beautiful and spectacular.
With some interesting places to see on the way, such as "Mirror Lakes", so named for obvious reasons...
And beautiful views (and roads)...
Arriving at Milford Sound was pretty special. It's, unashamedly, a major tourist attraction and you can see why...
This was my first view of the Sound, mid morning. Beautiful. The options are to cruise through the Sound on a boat or fly over it. I headed to the ticket office to get a boat ticket for the 12 noon sailing to discover a rather large queue... Not just of people but of bus loads of people.
So I went for Plan B...
I had a very funny 30 minutes at the airfield before 'climbing aboard'... Lots and lots of people were heading to the airfield for light-aircraft flights through the Sound but nobody seemed to be talking to the guy with the helicopters. I now really wanted to take a flight in it but I needed two further accomplices before it was financially viable. The chap who owned the business had nothing booked until late afternoon.
I must say that I really enjoyed the next ten minutes "selling" the flight to anyone I could find! First I jumped on a minibus full of Koreans but that didn't prove fruitful and I was politely asked to "get off the bus" as they were bequeathed to the company running the plane flights. I finally found a nice Scandi couple (complete with 10 month old) who arrived in a camper van to take a plane flight but I dragged them over the to Chopper centre and signed them up. I got my pre-agreed discount for getting more business and a job offer which I politely declined!
The flight proved to be amazing! 45 minutes of sheer exhilaration... The Sound you've seen but here's a couple of others...
It was quite windy and the helicopter was flown very, very close to the mountains to get lift... Bearing in mind that these photo's are on a compact with a relatively wide angle lens, below was taken just a few seconds after the photo above...
Absolutely incredible... Complete faith in a complete stranger!
Our ultimate destination was a landing on the glacier, high above Milford Sound... (which Scandi 10 month old took in his stride without a murmur!)
it felt like standing on top of the world for a moment. On that theme, the backdrop was Mount Tutoko (just shy of 9000 feet) which Hillary used as a practice climb when he was preparing for Everest... He never conquered it!
This was a thrilling ride and a great way to see both Milford Sound and the surrounding mountains. I'm very glad there was a queue at the quay!
I spent the rest of the day at Milford Sound and then headed back to Te Anau, back through the rather intimidating (and very dark) Homer tunnel.
From here the plan rather fell by the wayside. I had a morning of trout fishing lined up and a short trip to Doubtful Sound. Both were cancelled due to (again!) unseasonal gales. Seriously windy! I could either stick around for 2-3 days and wait for the deep low to move on or... Move on myself. Having limited NZ to a shorter than originally planned amount of time, I opted for the latter. Doubtful will have to wait to next time and as for trout, they are becoming a real challenge bizarrely with a number of attempts scuppered, mainly due to weather.
I pulled over for a rest and this train appeared from nowhere... NZ is full of surprises!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Te Anau
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