Hello from the South

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I left Dunedin and headed for Te Anau, a lovely litle town on the edge of a lake. Good base for walks, however, I was only there overnight before heading for Milford Sound the following morning. It was a very long day, but well worth it. It took 3 hours in total to reach Milford Sound as we had a couple of stops on the way, Mirror Lakes, Chasms and Monkey Creek. We were really lucky with the weather again and I managed to take some fab photos and got to drink out of the creek. I know it's only water but with no chlorine, no fluoride it was delicious. The cruise was fabulous, I didn't get to see any wildlife but the scenery was amazing. After the 3 1/2 hour cruise we had a 5 hour trip back to Queenstown via Te Anau. I was going to be doing some helpxing just outside Queenstown at a place called Glenorchy but my host got called in to work in Christchurch so she instead arranged for me to help out her partner. Now as she said it was her partner I assumed that he also lived in the Glenorchy area - WRONG - Graeme lived 3 hours south of Queenstown at a small place near Tuatapere, 1 hour from Invercargill and very close to the South coast. Graeme and Davey, I young guy also helping Graem out on his farm picked me up at 8.00pm. After dinner we set off and arrived at Graeme's place at midnight. A young calf still needed feeding so I didn't get to be until 1.00 am. Woke up to some amazing views though and Graeme had a gorgeous garden which I got stuck into. On the second day Graeme showed me around his place including his hunters lodge. Hunting is very big in this area in one form or another, there are wild deer, wild pigs and of course possums. Basically, if it is an introduced species it's fair game all the time. Whilst there I also went to see the biggest Totuara tree at over 8.3m circumference. I absolutely loved it at Graeme's place and I wished that I could have stayed longer but I stilll had so much to see. I didn't get to go up in his microlight because of the wind or go on a deer hunt with him but I did get to see my first sheep being killed and cleaned. We then had it's liver for dinner - gorgeous, the freshest meat I've ever eaten. Some might say it's cruel but after all that's what he was bred for. On the day I left, Davey drove me 1 1/2 hours away to Mossburn to enable me to catch the bus to Queenstown. Spent the afternoon checking out Queenstown and although it's nice, it's very much set up for tourism so everything was spend, spend, spend - not that I did. I just appreciated the views, I wasn't going to be bungy jumping or parachuting out of a perfectly good aeroplane anyway, but if you want to, then it's all there. Although it's busy but relatively sedate during the daytime, it's a different place after dark due to all the youngsters that hang around and it was just like any town back home on a Friday and Saturday night.

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Photos

Mirror Lakes
It's exactly what it says on the tin!

Chasms
Again, what it says.

Kea
The most southerly parrot in the world which unfortunately is relatively tame due to people feeding it.

Waterfall
One of the 2 permanent waterfalls in Milford Sound. We were lucky to have great weather, if you visit when it's raining the water runs off everywhere as there is not top soil to hold it.