Blogs from Fiordland National Park, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 5

Manapouri – Finished making beds, which ended up not being too bad! Good team, and a fast 3hr work day, in exchange for luxury - in other words a room for myself, and classic greasy pub meal, nightly. Circle track - took small boat accross river, joined 2 Germans in their early 30s along the way, talked about Germany city architecture all the way down, and had great group selfies along the beach Kepler track –met cool recently high school graduated Germans along the way, did Luxmore caves with them after a smooth shot of whisky – was beautiful, relaxing & fun, walked to and from caves under a moonlit sky. Did them again the next morning with Danielle and her buddy Adam. Didn’t go as deep though, and was less flexible in the morning! Routeburn ... read more

For the prequel to this trip please see NZ South Island Road Trip Part 1: Picton to Queenstown. Queenstown is the self-proclaimed adventure capital of the world. It's a thrill seekers paradise. Bungy jumping was commercialized here. There are hundreds of other adventure options as well, from swinging on a rope through a canyon to riding a jetboat a million miles an hour on the lake. The population of the town is only about 8,000 people, and all 8,000 apparently work in the tourism or service industry because there is not much other industry in town. At any given time the town has far more tourists than residents. This leads to an abundance of hotels and restaurants to choose from though. We are staying at the Copthorne Millennium Hotel and Apartments. We have booked a two ... read more

Wow, so last night I had the weirdest dream that Jackie Earle Haley was trying to sexually molest me (maybe it's time to stop playing sex offenders in your films JEH?) and when I woke up I couldn't quite seem to convince myself that Jackie Earle Haley was not currently in my room at the backpackers and waiting to do nasty nasty things to me... eventually I fell asleep again and had a much nicer dream that I don't remember (something about cooking and eating I think). Up bright and early to go on a trip to Milford Sound, the laptop guy is still asleep by the time i've showered, dressed, eaten a few things out of my boot... the boot of my car, it's where i was storing my supplies, don't judge me... so yeah ... read more

That's glow worms. Larvae actually. Not allowed to take photos in caves as they believe that taking photos will steal their souls and they won't morph into moths. Or was that the Aborigines? It all blurs into one big dreamscape after a while. Actually the Aborigines believe that they come back as moths (or is that possums?), so probably correct anyway. Anyway you'll have to imagine a big cave in the dark with lots of tiny green and blue led lights on the ceiling....and they charge you lots of money to get in....a bit like Santa's Grotto at B&Q..except you don't get 10% off on Wednesdays ( that's a private pensioners joke..you'll understand one day....soon). Well, that was 2 days ago at Te Anau, if anyone's bothering to look at a map..and why would you, what ... read more

Awesome day!! Started out in Milford Sound - full of clouds and gray overhead, but gorgeous high mountains and SNOW! We were all bundled up on deck, but got some beautiful pics. We offloaded over 90 passengers who are doing an overnight land trip to our next port of call. We pick them up tomorrow in Dunedin. We continued cruising in two more Sounds - Doubtful Sound (because the first boat captain thought it was doubtful that his ship could make it - thought it was too shallow!) and here's the Oosterdam sailing through, up to almost the end and then we turned around and sailed back out. The last one was called Dusty Sound and it was more of a circular sound where we sailed through the entire Sound. These are all glacier-carved valleys - ... read more