Day 52

Day 52,

We woke up early to catch the 8:00 am ferry back to Bluff. It was a nice cool calm morning so it was a pretty gentle trip back across the straight. Andrea got to talk to a very nice native kiwi (man not bird) whose family has had a home on Stewart Island since the 1890's.

We meet our bus at the ferry terminal and headed back into Invercargill for a little breakfast stop. Had some nice greasy eggs and bacon (meaty shoulder bacon, not that crappy strip bacon).

Then we headed out to check out the most southern point on the south island. It is a very windy spot!
















We got some nice pictures of the point and the lighthouse.





































Very windy spot...the type of trees below are normally 20 to 30 meters tall, the ones below are only about 5 meters tall and grow almost completely horizontal to the land.















From the southern most point we headed over to the Caitlins . This a very scenic beach holiday area for people from Christchurch, Dunedin, etc. And has a very cool and very rare area of petrified forest. It is believed that a volcanoe erupted a few years ago (thousands or millions of years ago) and sent this huge ash mud slide down to the coast felling the trees and filling them with ash and instantly petrifying them.
















From the petrified forest we headed over to Curio Bay. Curio Bay is one of the few spots that has resident Hectors dolphins that stay in the bay almost all the time...almost all the time! Wouldn't you know today was one day they decided to venture out of the bay in the pacific ocean. Definitley not sweet as!















From the Caitlins we headed up to Dunedin. Dunedin is known as the "Scottish city" of New Zealand (incidently Christchurch is known as the "English city"). Dunedin is also known for having New Zealand's largest university, The Universtiy of Otago, and is also the birthplace of Speight's beer (one of our favorites)! We got checked into our hostel called Hogwartz. It didn't really have much Harry Potter themed stuff, but was by far the best hostel we've stayed in and the best room we've had. Our room had a great view of the city and the hostel was just a half block up the street from the Speight's brewery! So, we got our stuff into our room, had quick dinner then headed down to the brewery for the evening tour.





















It was a pretty interesting tour about the history of Speight's, beer making and the making of the variety of Speight's. Speight's is known as the beer of real tough southern men (and women)...a real man's man beer(and womens). After the tour we got the opportunity to sample their six different varities. That means they told us what the six types were called and tasted like then let us drink as much as we could in a half an hour. We're not quite in university drinking shape, so we couldn't pound them like some of our fellow tourists, but we were able to decide on which ones we liked best. The best was their Distinction Ale, then the orginal Speight's, then the Pilsner, then the others (do we care about them...not really). We love the Distinction Ale!!!















After the Speight's brewery tour (best tour so far) we headed back to our hostel and crashed after a long day of "experiencing" New Zealand.

Day 51 - Easter

Happy Easter everyone! I know it is a few days after Easter, but better late than never...right?

We got up and got checked out of our backpacker and checked into our room at the South Sea Hotel. Very nice historic hotel.

Then we headed up the hill to the cool old Presbyterian Church. They had a very nice Easter service with only about a dozen people in attendance. The minister gave a nice sermon on the finding of the empty tomb and the need to use both your right and left brains (having faith and using logic) (Andrea said it was the best sermon she has heard). After the service we went down to their hall to have some tea and biscuits with the parishioners. It was nice to spend a little time talking to the locals and feel a little bit less like a tourist.

After church we went back to our old backpacker to grab some food we had left in the fridge. And lunch we headed back to the hotel to relax for little while.

Later in the afternoon we decided to go on a little walk down to Acker's Point to see if we could find any penguins or kiwis. There are some penguins that nest in the area and come back to their nest just before dark. There are a couple hundred kiwis on Stewart Island and it is supposed to be one of the few places you can actually see kiwis in the wild. The problem with spotting kiwis is that they are nocturnal and very shy, so they do a very good job at avoiding people.

We walked along the road enjoying the view

and the cool boat houses.

We stopped and took a look at the Acker house which is the oldest surviving building on Stewart Island.

















Then we headed out on the trail out to the point. Along the way we saw a pod of bottle nose dolphins swimming just off shore.
















They were jumping and playing as they swam around the point.
















Along the way we also saw a white faced herron looking for a snack in the rocks.
















Well, unfortunately we made it out to the point and back without seeing a penguin or a kiwi. However, it was a beautiful walk and we did get to see some wonderful wildlife.

Once back we went down to the restaurant in our hotel and had a very nice Easter dinner. Andrea had the salmon and I had some bluff oysters...yummy! A very nice way to end a great Easter in New Zealand.

Day 50 - Ulva Island

Day 50 - all about birds...
We woke up to another rainy day on Stewart Island. This morning we headed down to Golden Bay to catch a ferry over to Ulva Island. Ulva Island is just off the coast of Stewart Island, only a 10 minute ferry ride, and is a bird sanctuary. There are some nice walks around the island and we were looking forward to being outside. Some of the walks go along the beach. . . .















where we spotted an oyster catcher looking for food in the sand. They lay their eggs in the sand along the beach and are said to be very protective of their nests. If you see a pair of them together they say you should stay away so as not to get attacked!















Since we arrived in the morning it was nice and quiet on the island. We could hear the songs of many different birds, and were able to see a number of them as well.

Below is one of John's favorites, the Stewart Island Weka! They are pretty brave around humans, so you could get fairly close to them. They are a flightless bird and would not be around if it weren't for the sanctuary. They have rid the island of pests (possums, stouts and rats mainly) in order to allow the flightless birds to survive. When we were eating our peanut butter and honey sandwiches at lunch time, a weka would not leave us alone! It tried to hop onto our bags a couple of times and even John's lap! He told it to shoo and it proceeded to peck at his foot, too funny.















There were a few larger birds flying around, one being the Native NZ Pigeon, which is green with a white belly, and the other is the Kaka, seen below. These parrot-like birds are harder to see as they don't make very much noise and hang out far up in the trees, so we were lucky to see one!















One of the noisey little ones is the Bellbird seen below. Cute little ones huh?















Another bird that wasn't seen too often is the Red-headed Parakeet seen below. There is also a version that doesn't have a red head, and we saw that as well, but no photos were taken of that one.






















Ohhh, the cute little Robins! These little guys were pretty brave as well. If you stayed in one place for awhile they would come closer to you as they hopped along the ground looking for yummy critters in the dirt. They were keen to be around people as more critters are exposed after us humans walk and stir up the dirt. John "bird whisperer" also had one of the Robins try to land on his lap.






















The female Saddleback is below hunting for food.















This is the male version. They were often found together in pairs and moved really fast through the bush, so it was hard to keep track of them.















We spent some time on the beach and found the small sea anemones just off the shore in some of the tidal pools.















Along one of the walks on the beach there was a huge tree with a rope swing. John had to test it out!






















In the afternoon it finally cleared up a bit, so we went up to lookout point to get a view of the water and native bush around us.















The last picture is of a Tui. They have an amazing array of song notes and calls, and it is beautiful to listen to. They have the white feathers below their beaks that shake and vibrate with their calls. They are kind of a blackish/greenish bird, depending on the light.

We stayed on the island until 4pm. It was a lot of fun to be bird watching and enjoying nature. When we got back we cooked up the rest of our blue cod from fishing yesterday and relaxed, enjoying the evening.

Day 49

A quick note, Day 48 was published below Days 45, 46 & 47 instead of above! Oops

Day 49

Today we had to get up "stupid early" (per our bus driver) to catch our ferry over to Stewart Island. It was Good Friday and lots of people were heading over to Stewart Island for the long Easter Weekend. So, unfortunately the 11:30 and 9:30 ferrys were full and we had to take the 8:00 am ferry over. That meant that we had to be on the bus by 6:15 am to drive down to Bluff and catch our boat over to the third largest island of New Zealand. We watched the end of The Worlds Fastest Indian (a great movie about a guy from Invercargill, NZ and a motorcycle) on the way to the ferry terminal. We boarded the ferry and had a rough 55 minute ride over to Stewart Island. The Foveaux Strait is known as a pretty rough section of sea.

We arrived, got checked into our hostel, went to find some accomodation for Sunday night (it was a very busy weekend so our hostel and a few others were all booked up for Sunday night), and had a cup of coffee at the little cafe on the warf. We did find a room at the historic South Sea Hotel for Sunday night. We didn't want to do to much, because we were waiting to see if our afternoon activity was going to happen.















We found out about 11:30 that we were on for our afternoon fishing trip. We went out on Lo Loma to catch some blue cod.

There were a few other guys on the trip from New Zealand and the Cook Islands. We motored our from the harbour and stopped near some outer small islands. We put down our hand lines and started pulling in the blue cod. It was super fun and new way of fishing for both Andrea and me. Below is a look at some of our bait at the end of our fishing line.


































We fished for about 2.5 hours drifting and then motoring to a new spot to drift and fish again.


















One of the other guys even caught a small reef shark

The fishing was great and the scenery was even better.

We saw a bunch of Buller's Albatross (they liked try and steal our fish).

The captain cleaned the fish on the back of the boat, so they got plenty of guts and heads.

We also saw a rare Royal Albatross

We were out on the water for about 3 hours and caught enough blue cod for a few meals of fish and chips. John was the gold medal winner as he caught the biggest blue cod of the day! The blue cod was some awesome tasting fish! Right up there with fresh walleye.

After our incredible dinner of fish and chips we crashed due to our early morning and hard core fishing! A very fun first day on Stewart Island.

Days 45, 46 & 47

Day 45

We decided to take it easy today. We started off the day with a very important trip to the post office!

Since the rain was coming down pretty hard, we decided to spend some more time on the computer. We did a little bit of walking around town, then headed back to our hostel, called the Blacksheep.

Day 46

The day started rather early, as we left on the bus at 6:30am. We were headed for Te Anau and an exciting trip out into Doubtful Sound.

The weather in Queenstown was beautiful and sunny, but the closer we got to the west coast and fijordland, the darker the clouds looked. We saw a beautiful double rainbow along the drive, but we didn't find the pot of gold.

We arrived in Te Anau (Tee-a-now) around 9:45am, which left us enough time to drop our bigger backpacks off at the hostel we would be staying in tomorrow night.

We then headed to check in for our overnight journey out into Doubtful Sound (which is actually a fijord and not a sound).

Doubtful Sound is a larger fijord than the well known and travelled Milford Sound. The journey to Doubtful Sound is also a bit longer as we take a bus to a ferry on Lake Manapouri, we cross the lake and hop on a coach which takes us up and over the Wilmont Pass, where we reach our boat that takes us out into Doubtful Sound.

This is our first view of Doubtful Sound from a lookout point on the top of Wilmont Pass.













We proceeded down the gravel road towards the wharf where our boat was waiting for us. Once we were on the boat the views and photos were all around. It has been cold the last couple of nights and there was some fresh snow up in the mountains.














At first we were a bit bummed about the weather, but it turns out that being in the sounds when it is raining is quite spectacular since there are so many waterfalls coming down off the rocks and mountain sides.













The dark sky made some of the scenes much more dramatic.













The waterfalls were flowing!



















At the back of the ship we were on, they had around 20 kayaks, so after we were in one of the arms in the sound, we were able to take them out and paddle around a bit. The kayaks were very short, which made turning around quite easy.















We had a great time being out on the water, we just had to keep moving or else we would get eaten by sandflies. The ship with 3 masts you see in the background is the one that we were on.















John specifically asked for a paddle that would match his boat, and a lifejacket that would match his jacket, he is so stylish!

We got back on the boat and got dried off after almost an hour of paddling around. We then had a nice dinner and some good conversation with the other folks on the boat. We were up for one more adventure before the night was through, heading out to the Tasman Sea to see the fur seals on a few small islands just west of where the sea meets the fijord. It was difficult to get pictures due to the heavy rain, lack of light and rocking of the boat. This one managed to be somewhat discernible.

The one in the middle with his front end up is the bull, and he was talking to the rest of them. The seals were quite active this evening (it was getting close to the time they go fishing) and were playing on the rocks. It was fun to see the seal pups going up pand down the rocks and jumping in the water.

Our nature guide told us that a few weeks ago they saw a great white in this area preying on the seals. Fortunately we were able to watch the seals enjoy themselves.

Day 47
We woke up to a beautiful morning. We were up nice and early as the anchor was pulled at 6:45am. We wanted to get an early start to the day to increase our chances of seeing some dolphins and penguins. We headed out into another arm of the sound where the dolphins like to spend time. Fortunately, we were able to see some bottlenose dolphins swimming past our boat. They were not in the mood to play this morning, they were on a mission!

It had been cold again last night and we woke up to more snow on the mountains. It was beautiful to see.













Once we reached the area where the arm met the mountains, the captain turned the boat engines off and we had a few moments of silence in order to hear the water rushing in the waterfalls and the bird songs coming from the land. It was really nice to hear the sounds of nature and proved to be an interesting sociology experiment. Not everyone is able to stay quiet for 5 minutes.

After the silence broke, we headed back into the main sound.




















It was such a beautiful morning and we were enjoying some sunshine that we were not able to enjoy the previous day.














It was quite chilly this morning so we were bundled up to stay warm! We spent most of the morning outside enjoying the day and the scenery, but we took frequent coffee breaks to warm up.














Unfortunately we had to head back to the dock to be there by 9:45am in order to get back over Wilmont Pass, across Lake Manapouri, on our bus and back to Te Anau by 12:45pm.

We went and got some lunch then headed to the movie, Ata Whenua. It is an incredible scenic movie filmed by a helicoptor pilot in the fijordlands. It is a compilation of 10 years of filming put into a breathtaking 35 minute movie. It is a local gentlemen who did the work and when he was finished there was no theatre to show the movie in. So he built this one theater cinema in Te Anau just to show this movie! It is the only place in the world that you can see the movie (unless you purchase a copy of course) and it was well worth it.

The rest of the afternoon and evening we relaxed at our hostel and did some laundry. We didn't get the best sleep on the boat, so we were pretty tired by this point.