And it was in Milford that we made our first attempt at an in-air, jumping photo! I can't think of anywhere more stunning to practice our aerial selfie timing—we had a bluebird day, comfortably cool temperatures, and more cliffs, snow caps, and waterfalls than we had time to enjoy.
Read MoreQueenstown was an adventure: from the hairpin turns descending into the valley, to the Remarkable Mountains lining Lake Wakatipu, to our lessons on paragliding, thrills were at every turn.
Read MoreWe spent three glorious nights in Wanaka, a village just north of Queenstown. The weather was clear, and we pitched our tent next to a miraculously bug-free river lined with towering trees and surrounded by mountains. Our favorite activity was hiking the Roys Peak Track. The track was only eight kilometers, but those kilometers were entirely vertical as we ascended 1,578 meters—our quads were burning!
Read MoreWe spent three glorious nights in Wanaka, a village just north of Queenstown. The weather was clear, and we pitched our tent next to a miraculously bug-free river lined with towering trees and surrounded by mountains. Our favorite activity was hiking the Roys Peak Track. The track was only eight kilometers, but those kilometers were entirely vertical as we ascended 1,578 meters—our quads were burning!
Read MoreMore from glacier country! South of Franz Josef is the Fox Glacier, equally beautiful and slightly less visited. We hiked up in the clouds and jogged out in the midst of a deluge, but were able to appreciate the landscape that changed shape before our eyes.
Read MoreTraveling through the South Island resembled cruising in one powerful way—we were entirely at the mercy of the weather gods, especially as we cruised down the west coast. We checked the weather compulsively (Weather Underground being an eerily accurate source that could predict exactly when the rain would fall) and routed ourselves accordingly.
Read MoreWe planned to leave Franz Josef after our initial hike, but as we were driving out of town the following day, the clouds lifted. We figured it was a sign to stop and give Franz Josef another go. I'm so glad we did! With less rain, the hyrdotechnics were more muted, but getting to see more of the glacier itself made exploring the area a second time well worth it.
Read MoreFrom Hokitika, we continued making our way southward down the western coast of the South Island. Before long, we reached glacier country and the rainiest parts of the island. Small towns boast their rainfall—nine meters per year, 11 meters per year, 14 meters per year. Its the heavy rainfall, cold temperatures, and proximity to the ocean that allow the glaciers to expand and contract faster than most.
Read MoreDominic and I spent a fair amount of time trying to name the blue of the water in the Hokitika Gorge: cornflower? powder blue? cyan or cerulean? It was a tough call. The water was milky enough to be reflective, even on the cloud covered day that we visited the gorge. Hokitika is on the west coast of the South Island; in a flight from the sand flies, we had left Lake Daniell and hooked a sharp right toward the shore. We found excellent accommodation outside of Hokitika, a boutique hotel and restaurant that let us pitch our tent out back and pay for delicious eggs benedict and (heavenly) hot showers.
Read MoreAt Lake Daniell, Dominic scouted a wooded clearing with a number of inviting tree stumps to serve as our kitchen and dining room. He set out to prepare dinner, boiling water for freeze dried backpacking pasta pouches, when I heard him start to coo.
Read MoreWe headed due south after leaving the Golden Coast; our destination was Lake Daniell and it was to be our first backpacking, or tramping as they call it here, excursion of our trip. We spent a night camping at the base of the mountain in a valley filled with golden grasses and surrounded by plunging mountain silhouettes
Read MoreNot to worry, there was more to the Golden Bay than just swans along the shore. The northwesterly lobe of the South Island, known as Cape Farewell, offered rolling sand dunes, wide expanses of surf, wind and water sculpted rock formations, caves the tide threatened to swiftly fill, and an awesome place to explore on a bright afternoon.
Read MoreAre any birds lovelier than swans? I've only had a few swan encounters before: a white swan in a pond outside Trinity College in Dublin, or in the theater, where white swans and black swans try to pirouette their way into a prince's heart or chasse themselves out from under a sorcerer's spell.
Read MoreWhat a birthday Dominic had! It was February 28 and our first day on the South Island, the forecasts had been for heavy rain, so we treated ourselves to two nights in an AirBnB. Then a New Zealand miracle occurred: the day was overflowing with sunshine! Plus, we discovered our weekend home just happened to be at the start of the Queen Charlotte Track, one of the more celebrated hikes in New Zealand—nothing left to do but pull on our hiking boots and hit the trail.
Read MoreIn the mood for another bird blog? If so, it's a good thing because we just got home to Helios after four-ish weeks of scenic exploring and sandfly swatting on the South Island...adventures that left very little time for photo uploading or memory recording (especially as public internet access is somewhat stingy here: "free wifi" at a cafe is generally limited to 100 megabytes, less than a single photo upload or podcast download!).
Read MoreA few photos of our avian friends from Wenderhelm. Above is a goldfinch, only one of two we have seen in New Zealand (or ever); below is an eastern rosella, challenging to photograph due to their speed, but impossible to miss due to their bolt of rainbow-lightning fly-bys.
Read MoreJust north of Cape Palliser there is a small rocky cove that serves as a nursery and playground, or rookery, as it's known, for a colony of fur seals, a species whose numbers are making a huge resurgence these days after being nearly hunted to extinction.
Read MoreAfter a morning among the pinnacles, we hopped in the car and drove as far south as we could until we arrived at the Cale Palliser lighthouse. We hoofed the 258 stairs to the top and enjoyed views of the Cook Strait and the countours of the South Island in the distance.
Read MoreWe continued our tour of the North Island by heading southwest from Rivendell onto a peninsula that extends outward to form one of the most southerly points of the island. As we drove, the fields filled with cows and sheep looked increasingly dry and windswept, and increasingly like the coastal landscape we are used to driving through in central California. Our next stop were the Putangirua Pinnacles, an area of sandstone that a few thousand years of wind and rainfall transformed into gothic spires and cascading cliffs.
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