Pursuit

The South Island is a lot more dramatic than the North Island. The North Island seems to be more about the ocean, but the South Island seems to be more about the scenery. We have been doing a lot of camping and driving since we left Opua at the beginning of January. I always look forward to longer stops along the way. The rests are always welcome. This gives us a chance to relax and also an opportunity to find internet and catch up on what is going on in the world. Right now we're thinking "Poor Australia". Being so close to New Zealand, a lot of the news is about Australia and the year of floods and now the cyclones that have been hitting the east coast area of Queensland. Our thoughts go out to those affected by the floods and cyclone.

Back here in NZ, Tara and I enjoyed a very scenic horseback ride along the Farewell Spit. It's at the very top of the South Island and has dramatic views of the pasture lands and the ocean coastline from the top of the hills. We are circling the south island, traveling south along the west coast and north along the east coast. The west coast of the New Zealand's South Island has been rainy off and on, but this is to be expected for the west coast. This area can receive as much as 9 meters of rain annually. The weather can change hourly and forecasts are not always right, so we sometimes have great days when we expect rain and vice-versa. The Southern Alps are fantastic and the Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers were amazing. We have found so many areas that are so beautiful while driving down the coast. We enjoyed Queenstown and especially the gondola ride to the top of the mountain. While there, we ate at the mountain top restaurant where we enjoyed a super buffet dinner while overlooking Queenstown at night. The view was fantastic. It reminded me a lot of Whistler Village. Where else can you find a Louis Vuitton store with a population of only 11,000? It was very trendy and very touristy though, but a fun place to stop for a while and enjoy a good meal and sample some of the local pubs.

There are so many great views and trying to write about them all would be impossible. The Milford Sound was very dramatic and so we decided to take a cruise into the Sound, well it's actually a fiord, to really take it all in. The Milford Sound, as well as all the sounds down the west coast, was carved out by glaciers, not by water, which is the difference between a sound and fiord. The sailors back in the late 1700's didn't know that these areas were actually carved out by glaciers and to this day the names remain incorrect. To rectify this, New Zealand named the entire area Fiordland National Park. Unfortunately, Fiord is actually spelled Fjord. Good try though.

The Nelson lakes area has two beautiful mirror-like glacial lakes - Rotoiti and Rotoroa. They are fringed by beech forest and the DOC park system has a great hike to the top of Mount Robert, as well as the many other great walks throughout New Zealand. It was the toughest hike we have had so far, well at least for me it was. I felt like I was stopping every ten feet, but we were rewarded with incredible views from the top. The previous day, along the edge of the lake, we also enjoyed a level walk throughout the beech forest, aptly named the Honeydew Walk. That was more my speed. As we were walking along the trail we noticed that a vast majority of the trees were covered with a black sooty mould fungus. Along with the black fungus there were small white filaments hanging out from the beech trees everywhere and the bees seemed to be having a hay-day with them. The bees were everywhere! We found out later that the long white filaments belong to the Female Scale Insect or Honeydew Insect. The Honeydew Scale Insect has the longest anal filament of any insect. That was the thread we were seeing from all the tree trunks, the anal filament. It is important not to break it off though. The honeydew droplet at the end of the thread is the remaining waste product after the insect has drawn its food from the sap of the tree. This sugary syrup is vital for the forest ecosystem, sustaining bats, insects, lizards and honey-eating birds. Once the droplets fall they continue to nourish, feeding the black sooty mould fungi, which was coating the trees and providing a home for the insects. It is supposed to be sweet, so once I got my mind around the thought of sampling an insect's anus dripping, I had to try it out.