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Published: March 20th 2009
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How can words descibe landscape so beautiful it makes your eyes hurt? There's not much I can say about the past few days, I would like, instead, for the pictures to speak for themselves, although my cheap digital camera fails to capture even a tenth of the granduer.
Just for some backround info though, this is how I got to witness such overwhelming natural beauty:
After my stint of cycling to get to Christchurch, largest of the South Island's cities, I caught the bus down to Dunedin, a nice coastal town originally settled my Scottish whalers and miners (Dunedin is actually the Gaelic name for Edinburgh) but now a thriving University town full of hip cafes and lively pubs. I locked up my bicycle, and from there, caught another bus over the mountain pass and through some very Lord of the Rings-esque scenery to Queenstown, adrenaline capitol of the world. Once a small miners settlement, Queenstown is a town of tourists, for tourists. I don't think any locals even live there. In the summer, thrillseekers flock here to propell themselves down the lake in jetboats and through the air with a myraid of options including the world's highest bungy jump, skydiving,
and paragliding. In the winter, powder is King, and Queenstown the Aspen of the southern hemisphere. As all goods have to come over the mountains by truck, Queenstown is the most expensive place I have been in New Zealand, very easy for someone to bleed out thousands of dollars on adrenaline sports and seafood dinners in just a week or two. Set upon a picturesque lake framed by mountains, yet a bit too comerical for me, I left the next morning for the much quieter town of Te Anau in the Fiordlands. If you look at a map of New Zealand, in the bottom left corner, you can see that suddenly this solid land mass begins to crack and split apart like a weathered bit of leather. These are the Fiords, created by glaciers whom scraped along the land for thousands of years, and then melted to form over 600 scragly lakes between these jagged mountains. Hard to reach, barely livable, this area is as raw and pure as land can be. The only way to explore the Fiords is either via helicopter ride, or by hiring a ferry to drop you along one of the hiking trails. I opted
for a few hour's hike along the lake of Te Anau, which, on a side note, is twice the depth of the famous Scottish lake where Nessy resides, and then met with a boat that took me over to the mysterious glow worm caves. Discovered by the Maori centuries ago, these amazing creatures are only found in New Zealand, and live deep within the cave networks where they construct, like a spider, sticky netting, and sit in wait for their prey, omitting a beautiful pin-dot of blue light to attract the insects which will be their dinner. The blue light, we learned, is part of their digestive system, and the hungrier they are, the brighter they glow. After two months of heavy feeding in the worm stage, they metamorphisize into flies and live for only two days exerting themselves to the point of death with the task of producing their eggs. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the caves, otherwise I would be able to show you a whole new world of stars and untold constellations created underground by ravenous worms.
The next morning, and most monumental, I made my way via bus then boat, to Milford Sound, where
the most famous and majestic Fiords in the world reside. On the ride over, rain poured from the sky, creating hundreds of waterfalls down the vertical slopes of these glacier carved mountains, everywhere around you a living Japanese scroll painting of flowing mist. But just as quickly as they formed, when the clouds cleared and the sun came out, the waterfalls dried up and the mountains transformed back into their solid, steady selves. Onward to Milford we went, through tunnels and rainforested chasms cut in the earth by flowing streams, until we arrived at the ferry terminal perched on the edge of the earth. Thirty US dollars earned us a two hour cruise along Milford Sound, with rainbows, seals, more waterfalls, and snowcapped peaks on display. My eyes stinging with overindulgence and my throat dry from singing too many ooo's and aww's, I somewhat numbly managed to board a network of buses which eventually delived me back to my bicycle in Dunedin.
A whirlwind adventure it was, with more photos which I had to upload
here One more week of cycling left to go, and then back to Aukland it is!
Cheers,
Lisa
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