The reasons for the delay are two-fold: lack of time and the sheer magnitude of the task. I took over 2400 photos and it took more than a week to cull them to 1600. That was just the start - I shoot RAW, so the photos still need to be processed and in any case, who wants to flip through 1600 photos? A few days ago I had an epiphany - I don't have to do it all in one shot! I am sure everybody has experienced this - putting off a task simply because you don't believe it can be done in smaller chunks. Of course, one has to be careful not to make the chunks too small or you run the risk of ending up with a series of weightless accomplishments. Anyway, I managed to select and upload photos from the first few days and many of you have already seen them. (All links are in the blog.) As for the blog, I decided I should at least do an overview, so that folks looking at the photos have more context. So here goes.
We were in New Zealand for 13 days - arriving on the morning of April 12th and departing late evening of April 24th. We flew on Air New Zealand out of LAX - direct into and out of Auckland. Good airline, good service. My sister (Padma) and family (Husband -Ravi, Son- Siddarth (13), daughter- Smriti (16)) also joined us from Bangalore and we arrived within half hour of each other.
New Zealand is made up of two islands - North & South - and lies off the south east coast of Australia in between the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The two islands are approximately of the same size. They are very sparsely populated - in a land area about the same size as the UK, New Zealand has only 4 million citizens to the 60 million in UK. The south island is particularly sparse - less than a million people. People of European descent make up about 75% of the population, the native Maori make up about 15% and the rest are Asians and other pacific islanders. The majority whites and the native Maori are much more at peace with each other than say in neighboring Australia. Most places retain their original Maori names and some places are reverting back to Maori names. Incidentally, the Maori name for New Zealand is 'Aeotara' or 'Land of the long white cloud.'
Day 1 in Auckland (nickname - 'City of Sails') was spent wandering around near our hotel, which was close to the waterfront. Many places were closed since it was Easter Sunday. We took a city bus tour, but were mostly fighting sleep due to jet lag. We did visit the Auckland museum and a greenhouse. The highlight of day 2 (April 13th - my sister's birthday) was of course skydiving. It is hard to tersely describe the experience (needs a longer blog), but I am glad we did it. We had just the right set of circumstances to make it happen. None of us freaked out and we all had good jumps. In the evening, we had dinner at the revolving restaurant atop the Skytower, which is one of the highest points in the southern hemisphere.
Day 3 we rented a minivan and after some juggling managed to load 8 people and associated luggage. We drove south towards Lake Taupo. In between we stopped at Waitomo, which is famous for their glowworm caves. These are caves whose ceilings are covered with these worms that glow by burning up their bodily waste. You go into the caves and then on a boat that is tugged along in complete silence. It is almost pitch black and the show above you is wonderful. No photography permitted. It was late evening by the time we reached our 3-bedroom apartment in Lake Taupo. Next day was quite busy - jet boating in the Huka river (thrilling), visit to the Waiomongo thermal area (similar to Yellowstone), and finally luge in Rotorua. Rotorua is a big tourist destination, but we had time only to do the luge, which everybody enjoyed enormously. Drove back to our Lake Taupo apt for the night.
Photos Part 1
Day 5 was mostly travel - first back to Rotorua to drop off the rental van, then a flight to Christchurch (South Island) where we rented another car and continued heading further south - destination for the night was Lake Tekapo. With lots of stops on the way it was almost 8pm by the time we reached the Lake Tekapo house. It was a beautiful house! Immaculate and very well done. We all just wanted to spend time in the house, but it was only a night halt. The next morning we regretfully left the house and after driving around the lake and up Mount John for the views, we continued the drive to Queenstown. The scenery which had already been spectacular, got more so and we were compelled to stop many times. We managed to reach Queenstown in time to get to their luge, which was not quite as much fun as the one in Rotorua. We checked into our hotel after dinner.
Queenstown bills itself as the 'adventure capital of New Zealand', which is saying something since all of New Zealand seems to be crazy about extreme activities of all kinds. Queenstown also is home to the most number of 'Lord of the Rings' sites - this trilogy was a huge deal for them. The world's first commercial bungee jump site is in Queenstown. This is also the access town to the vast Fiorland National park, which is famous for its hiking trails (they call it 'tramping') and the fiords, of course. We did a day trip to one of them ("Doubtful Sound") - this took the entire day and involved a 2hour drive to the starting point, and two separate boat rides interspersed with a long bus journey. Doubtful Sound opens into the Tasman Sea and while the scenery was uniformly stunning, the mood was more sombre given the severely overcast skies throughout. On Day 8 (April 19th), we spent a good bit of the day browsing around the town and then drove north along the west coast. Our destination was the glacier area along the west coast. The road was full of curves and hills and valleys and it was late by the time we got to Franz-Josef.
Photos Part 2
The next day (April 20th - my brother-in-law's birthday) was bright and sunny and we set out to visit the glaciers. There is one in Franz-Josef and one about 20km south - Fox Glacier. We decided to do a helicopter tour - that was a fun experience, especially being able to land on the glacier and play in the snow a bit. In the late afternoon, we did a hike around Lake Matheson which is mostly famous for its iconic reflection of Mt Cook - New Zealand's highest peak (see my adjoining photo). The hike was very pretty (as seemingly every place in nz is) and watching the golden rays of the setting sun play off the snow covered peaks of Mt Cook made for a pleasant end to the day.
Day 10 had us driving up further north to the junction with Route 73, which cuts across to the east coast, ending in Christchurch. In between it passes through the high alpine pass called, 'Arthur's Pass.' There are some mining towns along the way and we made a number of stops and arrived rather late in Christchurch. We had booked ourselves into a somewhat pricey B&B for the last 3 nights in nz and the house turned out to be a beautiful mansion sitting on a 10-acre orchard that grew almost every imaginable fruit and vegetable. The owners are a couple and the wife did all the gardening on her own including maintaing the vineyards - they bottle their own wine and olive oil. We could have spent a lot of time just wandering the grounds. She did give us a tour of her orchard with lots of sampling of fruits and berries. Everyday we had a proper sit down breakfast in a beautiful kitchen overlooking the gardens. We had an early start the next day for our final activity for the trip - a day long, 'Alpine Adventure.' It involved a 4-wheel drive through a nz sheep station (farm), followed by an hour long, scenic jet boat ride, lunch, a drive upto Arthur's pass, and finally the return journey to Christchurch in the Tranz-Alpine train - supposedly one of the top 6 train journeys in the world.
Next day was the only mandatory "chill day" and I was planning to play some golf (lot of inexpensive courses all over nz), but the family prevailed upon me to skip it. We spent the day browsing around Christchurch town and the only activity was some putt-putt golf for the boys. In the evening, we dropped my BIL to the airport since he had an earlier flight. The next morning, my sister and kids left. After that we took the boys to a local wild life park and checked out some NZ critters. There are very few native animals, bird, or plants in nz - pretty much everthing is introduced. As a result, they hold the Kiwi bird in high regard over there. In the afternoon, it was our turn to leave and after one final cup of tea with our hosts, we left for the airport. First a flight to Auckland and then onto the overnight flight to LAX.
Photos Part 3
New Zealand is not an expensive place to visit, although the activities can get pricey. Hotel accommodations are very affordable and the people are very friendly. Food costs a bit more than in the US, but its a haven for lovers of fruits and vegetables. They take a great deal of pride in their country and every place and town we went was immaculate. Great scenery abounds and there are more lakes than you can keep track of. The mountains are all over and while they are not too tall, the roads criss-crossing them tend to be rather curvy. We were very lucky with the weather - we didn't see rain even once! Late fall is a great time to visit - tourists are fewer, the days are cooler, and the fall colors are spectacular.
1 comment:
good deed, sounds like a must-visit.
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