Day 18: Picton

After a disappointing time in Queenstown, we headed to Te Anau, which was purely a stopover on our way to Milford Sound. It’s been raining most of the day, but that didn’t stop us from trying to explore where they filmed the Fangorn Forest scenes from LOTR just outside Te Anau. Per the campground host’s recommendation we watched a film at a little theater in town showcasing the fiordlands. It sounds corny, but it was really kind of neat. The footage was collected by a local helicopter pilot over several years, and was produced by the same team that produced LOTR (seeing a theme here?) so it was pretty high quality. We spent the rest of the evening in the hot tub at the campground, listening to the rain tapping on the roof.

The next day we drove down to Milford Sound, and we were lucky to have been able to do it since the day before they had closed the road due to the risk of a landslide occurring due to the rain. Apparently, a big landslide happened last week and someone actually died, so the authorities are being very cautious. The road was a piece of cake and we made it down in less than two hours. The weather was pretty nice and we enjoyed a lovely cruise around the sound where we saw another penguin species, the fiordland crested penguin. I actually got to see one swimming in the water just before it dove under. Apparently they’re very shy but we did see a pair on the shore and they didn’t seem to mind us all staring at them. We wanted to do a quick hike but the trail was closed so we just drove right back out. We stopped to see a gang of kea birds, which are the only alpine parrot species, or so we’re told. They’re smart but have a reputation as being pests, since they love to chew on rubber and have been known to shred tires on parked cars. We pressed on towards Wanaka, and we actually got snowed on most of the way there. 

Kea up to no good

We got to Wanaka just in time to catch “Safety Not Guaranteed” at Cinema Paradiso, which was pretty good, and it was made even better by the wine and fresh baked cookies that we enjoyed during the movie. The next day we strolled a bit by the lake since a hike was definitely out of the question as Andy has a bit of PTSD from Tongariro. 

Next stop was the Franz Josef Glacier, where we got to do a heli-hike on the glacier. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience that we’ll never forget. The helicopter ride was brief but fun, and our guide on the glacier was great. We crawled through ice caves, wormholes and straddled crevasses, and I only fell once. We made it back to warm earth and enjoyed a soak in another set of hot pools before we treated ourselves to a dinner out.

 

Kayaking in Abel Tasman

Yesterday was a big driving day, with a few stops for shopping and photo ops. We ended up in Maharau, a tiny dot of a town but a good base for exploring the Abel Tasman National Park, which is what we did today. We kayaked along the coast a bit, but had to move on in order to catch the ferry back to the North Island, which is where we are right now. Our journey is coming to an end, sadly, with another long day of driving ahead of us tomorrow and one last day of excitement before we return to the real world. We did find out just moments ago that Obama was re-elected so for the moment, we are proud Americans!