Ponies, Lord of the Rings, and Fiords

Wednesday morning we awoke to superb weather despite questionable forecasts and were greeted by the resident adorable kitty at the Queenstown Holiday Park (every holiday park seems to have an obligatory friendly kitty). We packed up and drove 44km (about 27 miles for the fervently non-metric folk) along glacial lake Wakatipu, a huge, deep finger lake, north to the village of Glenorchy where we went for a horse trek! The drive itself was well worth it as the road followed the lakeshore with glacial hanging valleys visibly carved in the mountains just across. Glacier-covered peaks formed the northern skyline. A warning for those not wishing to read about Lord of the Rings: you should probably just skip the following section. My horse’s name was Elvis and he was actually IN THE TRILOGY. Yes it’s true, I actually rode a horse that was filmed in Lord of the Rings. I was elated when I found out that wonderful little tidbit of information. The ride took us along and across the Dart River, a very braided channel that flows out of the Humboldt Range, which was filmed as the Misty Mountains in the movies. The river itself is the same one that floods in front of Isengard and the distinctive mountain that serves as the backdrop to that same fortress was clearly visible throughout our ride. We rode directly in the shadow of the hill/mountain that was Amon Hen, you know, where Boromir betrays everyone and gets shot full of Orc arrows, blah blah blah. The beech forests just on the other side of it were Lothlorien. I found out some cool trivia about the actual filming as well: the area that Peter Jackson filmed on up here is a land trust called “Paradise.” It is a pristine little valley of huge native beech forests surrounded by imposing Southern Alps. The man who owned it died a few years ago and donated it as a land trust with the stipulated that it not be altered, developed, or otherwise touched for 99 years. So when Peter Jackson wanted to film there, they struck a deal. He donated a bunch of money for the upkeep of the place and promised to leave everything just as it was. So he traveled there before filmed started to mark and take pictures of every bit of vegetation, etc. that he didn’t want in the film. All of the marked items were removed and put in a green house, to be replanted exactly as before in meticulous detail after the filming was complete. Nice fun fact, eh? Also, the latest installment of the X-Men series about Wolverine was filmed right there as well. I have more awesome bits of information that I acquired about the place but I’m afraid I’ve dragged on for too long. Anyway, the ride was about 3.5 hours of walking and cantering through stunning glacial country with few to no signs of human habitation in perfect weather. Not too shabby.
The horse trek took us to within about fifteen minutes, as the crow flies, from Milford Sound, a well known fiord in the south western coast’s Fiordland National Park. Unfortunately, those fifteen minutes can only be crossed by air or by backpacking (not actually 15 minutes walking, more like two days). The only access road for vehicles to the fiord is a five hour journey around the mountains. We could practically smell the ocean and yet we had to drive five hours around…I was not pleased. However, it turned out that the latter portion of the drive to Milford Sound was well worth the extensive detour. We drove through perfectly sculpted, rainforested glacial valleys with hanging valleys and waterfalls lining them. And despite the Milford Sound area being one of the rainiest in the world, we had a clear, if windy, day. We took a 2.5 hour “Nature Cruise” through Milford Sound, out to the Tasman Sea and back. If anything can be described as “unfairly gorgeous” because it makes anywhere else you go look just ugly in comparison, Milford Sound is it. Though, the same could probably be said for the less tourist-ridden Doubtful Sound and the rest of Fiordlands National Park. We saw New Zealand fur seals and hoped to see dolphins and Fiordland Crested Penguins, though to no avail. At the end of the cruise, we were granted the opportunity to descend a spiral staircase down into “Milford Deep” at their marine observatory. The vast amount of rainfall and runoff into the fiord creates a dark layer of not-so-dense fresh water that sits on top of dense, blue salt water several meters below. The tea-colored fresh layer reflects enough light to create dark, deep water conditions at just a few meters. So, we descended about 10 meters into the observatory and looked out through thick windows to what can only be described as “window beds” for corals, tube worms, sea stars, giant mussels, sea cucumbers and other marine invertebrates (and fish) that normally live deeper, further out on the continental shelf. They even had a few brachiopods. Only a few of you probably know the significance of that, but I can now saw that I’ve seen living brachiopods. Dolphins, sharks, penguins, and seals are purported to occasionally swim by, though we were not fortunate enough to see any.
On the way to the fiord, one must travel through a long, narrow, unlit tunnel underneath a mountain in earthquake country. The tunnel is one-way, so there is a stop light on either side with a fifteen minute wait between green lights. As we approached, we parked the car in line and got out to take pictures of the scenery in the obligatory tourist fashion. However, on the roadside was a large Kea, the world’s only alpine parrot. So I took pictures of him instead. They are very curious, even destructive birds (they’ve been known to tear at car tires until they’re ruined) and people were feeding this one despite the ample signage pleading with them not to. Still, I got a sweet picture. We are currently spending our second consecutive night in Te Anau, though we were gone all day at Milford Sound. Tomorrow we drive to Dunedin, our first foray onto the east coast. I am excited to see my flat and visit the city in which I will be spending the next five months. From there, we drive up to Christchurch, further north on the east coast to turn in the rental and fly to Auckland where I will meet my orientation group and Mom and Dad will continue onto the Bay of Islands and other north island locations without me.
Pictures next! They are a smattering of all the places we’ve seen so far, and are all in very different locations so don’t get confused when you see glacier and kayaking pictures next to each other.