Trip to South Island

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We spent ten days seeing as much as we could of South Island. At the Antarctic Centre in Christchurch we zoomed in 'Hagglund' Antarctic vehicles over hills and through a lake; there is also a snowstorm and a lot about Antarctic exploration - I find the last page or two of Scott's diary very moving however many times I hear it.

We then got a train down the coast (5 hrs) and over the mountains (4 hrs). It felt much too short - I can no longer believe an hour on a train is a long journey. The train has an open-air carriage to enjoy the scenery at its best, as long as you wrap up well and squeeze through other passengers all wanting photos at the same places.

Anyway, next we hired a car and drove down to Franz Josef Glacier, and then headed back up to the top of South Island.

We are learning a lot about how landscapes are formed, with all the vivid manifestations of plate tectonics here. We try to explain to the children how things change slowly over 1000s of years; but then we look at a glacier where the guides see changes from week to week, and carve out a new path each morning to take visitors on. The same was true on White Island, a volcano in the sea, where they point out steam vents and bubbling pools that weren't there last year.

On the way we saw kiwis in a conservation place. They are surprisingly large as well as being rare and endangered. Like other native NZ birds they can't fly - they never needed to evolve the ability to fly as there were no natural predators on an isolated land with no route for any predators to reach them. So when people and dogs turned up they were in trouble. Now they are being re-introduced into a few protected areas.

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