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Published: April 22nd 2008
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Sooo,
After I traveled for another week on the North Island, visiting The Coromandels and Rotorua, I flew to Invercargill in the south tip of the South Island. Here I met up with Eva, a German girl I met through work at the institute, to travel by car through The Catlins and Otago Peninsula to Dunedin. The Catlins are very quiet and not touristy, which was a welcome change to Rotorua (a volcanic area which is nevertheless mindblowing). In The Catlins and on Otago Peninsula we saw loads of sea lions, fur seals, the rare yellow-eyed penguins and tatatarata: ALBATROSSES! What a sight, these birds are absolutely incredible.
In Dunedin, so far the only town I actually like (sort of), I said goodbye to Eva and travelled to Queenstown. I wanted to do some hiking here, but I did not book any of the popular Great Walks. Surprisingly I was able to do the Routeburn Track and even the Milford Track as long as I did the one straight after the other. So with about 80 km of walking ahead of me I took off to the Routeburn Track, expecting a nice and peaceful three days walking. It turned
out a woman had gone missing on the track (and still has not been found), so instead of tranquility I found helicopters buzzing around my head all day. Nevertheless, the weather was great, I met some nice people and made plans for hiking with the tramping club of Masterton in the Tararua Mountains (North Island) when I get back to work in 'lovely' Palmy.
The day after I finished the Routeburn Track I started the Milford Track, which wanders through a small part of Fjordland. The track follows a valley in between steep, rugid peaks from which water falls come crashing down. It's such a majestic sight... This route starts and ends in the middle of nowhere so you have to be dropped off and picked up with a boat. These boat rides alone are already spectacular, with beautiful views and dolphins swimming next to the boat! At the start of the track I met some cool guys and we walked most of the time together. Thanks to a shared passion for 'Pinky and the Brain' and the fact that two out of the four of us knew the lyrics to all the songs by Queen and Disney by heart
(this seems to be an Israelian trade), there was not a single dull moment. In the evenings we did some stargazing (I can now finally find that Southern Cross (thank you Pete), after several people have laboured hard to point it out to me over the last few months). I also finally got a chance to see glow worms in action. These animals are really amazing.
After four days of sunshine on the Milford Track (all Kiwi's who read this are probably flabbergasted, but yes, it's true, we had no rain) and living on dehydrated food, it was time for some decent food. So I said goodbye to Jim and Guy, and Roy and I went back to Queenstown for diner at the infamous Fergburger (mmm, a falafel hamburger for me). The day after we left to the Franz Josef glacier on which we did a walk. This was awesome: crawling through these bright blue caves in the ice (and getting stuck), walking through huge crevasses and climbing up along ropes.
The West Coast of the South Island along which I was traveling a few days ago is absolutely gorgeous. There is only a small strip of flat land
with a few houses here and there and next to that the Southern Alpes rise high. Really spectacular!
But, I left this coast and did two days of hiking in Arthur's Pass in The Alpes, from where I left this morning to arrive in Christchurch.
So have a look at the pics, I can't describe the beauty of this place properly anyway...
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