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December 10, 2004
Greetings From Middle-Earth!
Kia ora from Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud! (Aotearoa is the Maori name for New Zealand.) I've been looking forward to seeing "Middle Earth" for quite some time, and now I'm here, I can hardly believe it. I've seen quite a bit already, so here's a summary of what I've done and where I've been (with some pictures). I'll try to keep it shorter than my last post from Australia. ;-)
Back on Monday, Nov 29th, my parents & I arrived in Christchurch mid-afternoon. We stayed at David & Karen's house in Ashburton (an hour south of Chch). David was an agricultural exchange student to the U.S. back in 1985 and stayed with my parents for a few months back when we lived in Springfield. Then he & Karen visited us in Cumberland back in 1992, so it'd been 12 years since we'd seen them, it was heaps of fun catching up and meeting their kids Joel (12), Ryan (10), Laticia (8) and Seth (3).
David took my parents & I on a four-day whirlwind tour of the South Island. On Tuesday we headed out from Ashburton past Mount Hutt and Rakaia Gorge and over Arthur's Pass, one of only four passes across the Southern Alps, the mountain chain that runs the entire length of the South Island. In northern Canterbury, before we got to Arthur's Pass, we saw from a distance one of the filming locations for the movie "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," which will be coming out in a year or two probably. It was just cloudy on the eastern side of Arthur's Pass, but as soon as we crossed it it started raining, and didn't let up the rest of the day. Rain on the west coast of NZ isn't unusual though, most areas typically get 3-5 meters (10-17 feet) of rain each year. We stopped in Greymouth at David's uncle Jack & aunt Jeanette's place for a bit, where David picked up some whitebait, which he made for dinner at our motel in Franz Josef. Whitebait is a Kiwi delicacy, but it looks a bit like deep sea maggots before it's cooked. Fortunately it tastes much better than that though. :-) Before resting at Franz though, we briefly stopped in Hokitika, the greenstone (pounamu/jade) capital of New Zealand, where my mom picked herself up a nice jade necklace.
On Wednesday, Dec 1st we hiked up to the terminus of Franz Josef Glacier. Franz Josef Glacier is unique for a few reasons. It's the closest glacier to the ocean in the world, and it's also the fastest-moving glacier in the world, sliding down the mountain at an average speed of 1 meter per day. For a glacier that's lightning-quick! It was also used as the film site for the lighting of the beacons in "Return of the King." There were groups climbing up onto the glacier, but we didn't do that. It was so awesome walking right up to it though and seeing just how immense and huge it really was, and to see the enormous boulders it was churning out. Fortunately the weather had turned partly sunny too (it'd stay nice until a rainy Saturday). After that we continued down the west coast and stopped at Lake Matheson, in the hopes of getting a famous "postcard picture" of Mt Cook and Mt Tasman being reflected in the calm waters of the lake, but unfortunately the lake was choppy and the mountains were hidden by cloud. Oh well. When crossing the Southern Alps again, this time at the Haast Pass, it was amazing to see the stark and very sudden (it was literally like a line in the sand) change in vegetation just after the pass, from the lush green rainforests of the west to the comparatively dry grasslands of the west. We stopped briefly in Wanaka before making our way through the scenic Crown Ranges to Arrowtown for the night.
In the morning we took a short walk up the Arrow River to see where the Black Riders fled the oncoming flood at the Fords of Bruinen in "Fellowship." Strangely enough, they filmed Arwen & Frodo's crossing and her calling of the flood on a completely different river. Then we spent a good chunk of the day in nearby Queenstown, perhaps the most popular tourist destination in New Zealand. I was a bit shocked when my parents said they were actually interested in taking a jet boat ride, since they don't tend to like any of those adrenaline-type activities. So we took a very cool and really fun 25-minute Shotover Jet boat ride down the Shotover River, hurtling through scenic gorges mere inches from rock walls at 70 km/h (about 45 mph) and doing plenty of 360's. 
Then after lunch we took a gondola ride up to the top of the mountain right behind Queenstown for some breathtaking views of Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu & the Remarkables (a spectacular mountain range serving as a backdrop to the city and lake). After that we moved on north to the stunningly characterless town of Twizel for the night. The town only popped into existence about 40 years ago to house the workers who were building all the hydroelectric dams in the area. But now the dams are long since built, the workers are gone, and if it weren't for its relative proximity to Mt Cook (only an hour's drive, and the only settlement anywhere near there), Twizel would surely be dead as a town by now.
Friday morning we took a very scenic drive past Lake Pukaki and between two mountain ranges in the Southern Alps up to Mt Cook Village. It had just snowed the night before in the mountains, so everything was bright & white from a lower elevation than even the day before. We were able to see all the snow-capped mountains that surrounded the village (and The Hermitage, NZ's oldest and most famous hotel because of its stunning views), except for Mt Cook -- Aoraki and its 3716m summit was shrouded by cloud for all but a passing second here or there. On our way back to Auckland we stopped at the well-photographed and very pretty Church of the Good Shepherd in Lake Tekapo. Behind the pulpit are breathtaking views of the turqoise waters of Lake Tekapo and the snow-capped Southern Alps. With scenery like that in the background, it's hard to believe that anyone would pay much attention to what the minister was preaching. Either that or it'd be a constant reminder of just how great God is, to create a landscape like that.
Saturday we just hung around with David & Karen & family in Ashburton. In the morning their daughter Leticia (2nd grade) was in the town's Christmas parade playing violin on a float, so we went to that. By the afternoon it was raining and David's parents, his sister and her family came by, so we found ourselves in the middle of the third extended family gathering of our trip (after being part of two of them in Oz). It's by far the best way to meet locals and get a feel for the culture though, getting to know families of friends.
We (David, his son Joel, my parents & I) got up at 3:30am and left at 4am to take my parents up to the Christchurch airport for their rather lengthy and drawn-out flight home at 7am Sunday morning. After seeing them off I rented a car (an early 90s Toyota Corolla, it has decidedly less power than either my Mazda back home (which I'm so looking forward to driving again) or the brand new Nissan Maxima my parents & I rented in Oz) and drove it back to Ashburton, where I promptly took a nice three-hour nap. The rest of the day I just took it easy at their place, hanging out with David & Karen & family.
Monday morning I struck out on my own, heading south for Dunedin. On the way I stopped just south of Oamaru to see the Moeraki Boulders, a group of 40 or 50 oddly spherical boulders just sitting on the beach. There have been several theories to explain their existence (including falling from space), but most likely they were just concretions formed from the mudstone they were once encased in. And then when the spherical boulders crack they break into shapes resembling turtle shells. The whole thing was very cool, if a bit bizarre. When I got to Dunedin I went out to the Otago Peninsula on the edge of the city to the albatross colony at Taiaroa Head. It's unique in that it's the only mainland albatross colony in the world (all other colonies are on small, rocky, uninhabited and virtually inaccessible islands in the middle of the ocean), and it's even within the Dunedin city limits. 
There are over 90 northern royal albatrosses that call Taiaroa Head home. They're huge birds, with a 3m (10 ft) wingspan. Typically they only lay one egg every couple years, and usually it takes them a few years of unsuccessful tries before they figure out that they can't run off and socialize with the other birds, that they actually have to sit there and incubate the egg and take care of it. Kinda funny birds actually. And clumsy too. When they first come in for a landing after spending anywhere from 1-5 years at sea, their legs aren't used to the feeling of terra firma, so they usually awkwardly crash, tumble and slide until the come to a full stop, hehe. While I was out there I also took a tour of Fort Taiaroa and the 'Disappearing Gun,' a huge gun/cannon that was installed at the fort in the 1880s amid fears of a Russian invasion. Fully hydraulic, it was state of the art for its time. Soldiers would crank the gun up (after setting the range, etc), and upon firing, the recoil would send the 5-meter muzzle back down underground where it could be reloaded and re-aimed. It was quite interesting.
Before leaving Dunedin on Tuesday I drove over to the world's steepest street, Baldwin Street. Dunedin is much like Duluth, in that almost all its streets lie on steep hills, but Baldwin St is steeper than them all. At is steepest, it's at a slope of 1 in 2.86, which earned it a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. On my drive south I went through the scenic Catlins, a region of rolling hills, forests, and a few waterfalls, and then on through Invercargill, NZ's southernmost city, before I got up to Te Anau for the night. Te Anau is the gateway to the region of Fiordland, and sits on Lake Te Anau, the South Island's largest lake and the second largest in the country. It's a nice little town.
Wednesday I took the Milford Road, two and a half hours of the most stunningly scenic road I've ever travelled on, from Te Anau to Milford Sound. Around midday I took a two-hour cruise out on the amazingly beautiful Milford Sound, New Zealand's most spectacular fjord. The cruise took us past Mitre Peak and several waterfalls, winding all the way down the 22-km long fiord out to the Tasman Sea. Milford gets an average of about 7 meters of rain per year, so I was naturally expecting rain, but instead I was treated to partly sunny skies the whole day, along the Milford Road and on Milford Sound. It was really windy out on the sound though, with gale force winds, but it was still quite a fine day. The Milford Road is the only road into or out of Milford, so I was treated to taking the most scenic road ever a second time. Poor me. ;-) I stayed the night in Queenstown.
I took it easy yesterday (Thursday) morning in Queenstown, and then yesterday afternoon I went out on a Discover the Rings 4WD tour of several film sites around here. We went up into the Remarkables (one of the main mountain backdrops throughout all the LOTR movies), to one of the sites for Minas Tirith, then to the Kawarau Gorge (site of the Argonath on the River Anduin), to the Arrow River (site of the ambush of Isildur and of the fleeing of the Nazgul in the face of Arwen's flood), and finally up to Coronet Peak, which will probably have some scenes from the extended edition of ROTK. After that I just relaxed and hung out in Queenstown, bought a couple shirts at some shops, it was just nice to take a break from driving for a bit. I also met a couple of cool British blokes from London and Glasgow here at the hostel in Queenstown.
I just popped into an internet cafe next door to my hostel in Queenstown this morning to post this, and then today I'll be driving back to Ashburton. Tomorrow David is gonna take me and his kids out to Mt Sunday and Mt Potts Station to see the site of Edoras, and then next week I'll be making my way up to Picton by Monday afternoon to take the ferry over to Wellington, to begin my week-long tour of the North Island, my last week of being abroad (for now). I don't know if I'll get a chance to post again at all next week, but I will if I can. If not, so long and farewell until I'm back in the Upper Midwest!
Posted by Jared at December 10, 2004 09:29 AM