Tag Archive for 'Te Anau'

On Walkabout On: The Road Back to Te Anau

Published on January 12, 2009 in New Zealand. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

After completing our boat tour through beautiful Milford Sound on New Zealand’s South Island, my wife and I walked back to the car park where our campervan awaited us.  At the car park we took one last look at Milford Sound:

The tide was out quite a bit compared to early in the morning, but another big difference compared to earlier in the morning was how the top of the mountains, such as Mitre Peak were not shrouded in clouds:

After taking in our last view of Milford Sound, we headed back up Highway 94 to Te Anau where we once again planned to spend the night.  Unlike when we drove to Milford Sound early in the morning, the valley on the west side of the highway was no longer shrouded in clouds:

Like most other roads on the South Island, Highway 94 had its fair share of these dangerous one land bridges:

By this time the tour buses from Queenstown were arriving for afternoon boat tours which made these bridges extra dangerous.  At least there was no trains running across these bridges as well, compared to other bridges we had to cross on the South Island.

Since the weather was clear and we still had day light to use, we decided to stop and complete a short hike along the way before returning to Te Anau:

We pulled into a dirt carpark that was dwarfed by a massive peak with a number of large waterfalls cascading off the side of it:

The trail we decided to hike is known as The Chasm:

This quote from David Thoreau is especially true in New Zealand’s Fiordland area that is just filled with incredible glacier carved mountains and fiords.  The trail initially passed through some thick native New Zealand rainforest:

After having hiked through many rainforests in Australia, New Zealand’s rainforests are no where near as impressive as the ones that can be found across the Tasman Sea in Australia.  However, they are still quite beautiful and no where in Australia are their mountains peaks that can match those found in New Zealand.  The trail continued across a bridge that spans a wild river that flows down the side of the mountain:

The actual “Chasm” that this river creates through the rock was actually not that impressive:

It was still a nice walk through the rainforest and the hike to the Chasm is only about an hour round trip and can be completed by anyone.  We actually completed our walk just in time because a tour bus pulled up and a hoard of people greeted us as we walked by to our campervan.  Someone else that greeted us back at our campervan was a Kea bird:

We had saw one these guys back at the Te Anau Wildlife Centre but this was the first one we had seen in the wild.  This guy was not intimidated by us at all and by looking into his eyes I could just tell how intelligent this bird is:

The Kea just seemed to be sizing us up and even walked around our campervan checking things at.  Fortunately he didn’t let the air out of our tires as these birds are well known for doing.  The Kea actually spent about a good 10 minutes checking us out before finally flying off.

From the carpark we then continued up the highway that was becoming increasingly surrounded by extremely rugged mountains that had numerous waterfalls flowing down them:

Highway 94 then climbs up the valley to a point where we had to wait in a long line in order to wait our turn to pass through the Homer Tunnel.  While we were waiting in the que to pass through the tunnel we got to enjoy and incredibly scenic view back down the valley we had just drove up:

The que of cars eventually moved forward and the light turned red on us again before we could pass through the tunnel:

We spent a total of about 30 minutes waiting to pass through this tunnel and when the light finally did turn green, this time we were the first one through the tunnel:

Traveling through the tunnel was just as hair raising as when we drove through it in the morning time.  There has been talk about widening this tunnel but the cost of doing so is something that prevents any tunnel widening from happening.

We were glad when we finally got through the tunnel and the high peaks on the east end of the tunnel came into view:

Looking at these peaks, it was easy to imagine the giant avalanches that must cascade down these steep slopes in the winter time:

From the tunnel the road increased in evaluation a bit that offered views of the rugged mountains in this area:

These mountains almost looked liked sharpened teeth as they pointed to the sky:

Highway 94 eventually entered the fog shrouded valley we had crossed earlier that morning which look quite different with bright late afternoon sunlight:

After passing through the wide valley Highway 94 once again ran adjacent to Lake Te Anau which meant we would soon be back to spend the night at the local campervan park:

By the time we got back to Te Anau our low fuel light on our campervan actually came on which is an indication of how many kilometers we drove that day just to get to Milford Sound and back.  It was a really long day, but we had an absolutely great time and grilled our last steaks that night to celebrate what was quickly becoming the end of our tour of New Zealand.

Next Posting: The International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch

Prior Posting: Video of the Wildlife of Milford Sound

On Walkabout On: Highway 94 to Milford Sound

Published on December 31, 2008 in New Zealand. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The next day after finishing our tour around Lake Te Anau, my wife and I woke up early, loaded up our campervan, and headed up to the legendary Milford Sound.  The sound is located 121 kilometers North of Te Anau:

This Google Earth image gives a pretty good indication of how steep and rugged the terrain between Te Anau and Milford Sound is that New Zealand State Highway 94 has to pass through:

If traveling from Queenstown it is a long 279 kilometers away, but that still doesn’t stop most of the tourists visiting the sound from doing so from Queenstown.  In fact 80% of the tourists visiting the sound are day trippers from Queenstown.

Some of the people we talked to at our caravan park told us to leave first thing in the morning to go to Milford Sound because if we arrived in the afternoon the odds are that the sound will be obscured with clouds.  They told us the morning is the best time to go to get unobscured views of Milford Sound.  They told us however to never drive the road to Milford Sound in the darkness because it is an extremely dangerous road.  Who are we to argue with the locals?

Thus my wife and I took off from Te Anau in the early morning twilight and made sure to make a stop to watch the sun rise over Lake Te Anau before entering into the mountainous pass to Milford Sound:

As we drove up Highway 94 to Milford Sound from Lake Te Anau the road entered a long and wide valley:

Here is how this valley looks on Google Earth:

The early morning fog made some spectacular photographs on the valley’s floor:

It was easy to picture in my mind the large glacier that must have flown down from these rocky slopes to have carved this wide flat valley, similar to Franz Josef and Fox Glacier valleys my wife and I had seen before:

As we continued down Highway 94 the road eventually passed one the lakes left by the melting waters of the glacier that once passed through here, Lake Gunn:

Here is a Google Earth image of the highway as it passes along the side of Lake Gunn:

Just North of Lake Gunn Highway 94 makes a sharp turn to the West as seen in this Google Earth image:

A short ways down the highway the road passes through what is known as the Homer Tunnel:

The road through the tunnel was primitive and mostly dirt, not very wide, and extremely dark.  In fact traffic through the tunnel is one way only and cars have to wait on each side for the light to turn green before proceeding.  The tunnel is named after William H. Homer who discovered this route to Milford Sound with another gentleman by the name of George Barber in 1889, one year after Quintin MacKinnon forged the Milford Track in 1888.

Construction of the tunnel began in 1935 and wasn’t completed until nearly 20 years later in 1954.  The tunnel is 1270 meters long and actually runs at a slope of 1:10 gradient through the mountain.  This was easily the scariest tunnel my wife and I have ever driven through.  Here is a Google Earth image of where Highway 94 enters into the mountain where Homer Tunnel is located:

Once we passed through the tunnel we entered a world of steep cliffs, heavy fog, and rain:

Even though we couldn’t see it, this how the terrain looks from above once outside the Homer Tunnel:

We actually could not see a thing until we pulled into Milford Sound.  At Milford Sound most of the mountains had a cloak of clouds hiding them:

If you are wondering, yes that is our campervan pictured above. Anyway since there wasn’t much to see my wife and I went and checked out the visitor center and got ourselves a cup coffee at the cafe there:

The village of Milford Sound is very small and consists of little more then a hotel, visitor center, a small petrol station with extremely expensive petrol, and the port.  After seeing the sky high petrol prices there, we were glad we filled up the campervan prior to leaving Te Anau:

After we came back out of the cafe it was about 8:00 AM and the skies began to clear up a bit exposing the tops of some of the peaks:

We walked down to the water edge and were in awe and the landscape before us:

Rudyard Kipling when he visited Milford Sound called it the Eighth Wonder of the World because he was so impressed by its beauty. For comparisons sake, here is a picture of what the sound looks like on a clear winter’s day:

I don’t know if it is the Eighth Wonder of the World or not, but it sure was impressive and worthy of getting a picture in front of:

Here is something I was quite surprised about and you will not read about in a New Zealand travel brochure.  Milford Sound is infested with sand flies.  It was hard to stand still for this picture because of the sand flies that were swarming around me.  Definitely bring some bug repellant to combat these things with because it was something we did not bring and could have really used.  We would later find out during our boat tour that the reason the Maori did not permanently inhabit Milford Sound was because of these sand flies.  So that gives you an indication of how bad they are.

Anyway from the visitor center area of Milford Sound we walked over to the port to book a boat tour that morning.  The port is a short walk from the actual village of Milford Sound and from the port we able to get a good view of how small the village actually is:

What you see in the above picture is all there is to the Milford Sound village.  We then entered the port facility which looked really new to book a boat tour that morning.  Fortunately we had beat the day tripping tour bus crowd to the sound thus leaving the port virtually deserted except for a few people. There is actually is a variety of tours to sign up for from small boats to extremely huge boats that are all docked at the pier:

We decided to take one of the smaller boats and even on the smaller boat it was no where near capacity and only had about 20 people max on it. It was quite cold out on the water but my wife and I sat outside right on the very front of the boat because the Milford Sound experience was one that we have saved for last on our New Zealand itinerary and we just want to just suck in the experience of traveling through these beautiful natural wonder.

Next Posting: Milford Sound – Part 1

Prior Posting:  Around Lake Te Anau

On Walkabout Video: Lake Te Anau, New Zealand

Published on December 29, 2008 in New Zealand. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Here are a couple of videos from my boat trip across Lake Te Anau, New Zealand:

Video 1:

Video 2:

On Walkabout Around: Lake Te Anau, New Zealand

Published on December 27, 2008 in New Zealand. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The next morning my wife and I got up early after arriving the evening before in the scenic New Zealand village of Te Anau, to go back to the lake shore and see the sunrise on the lake:

The rays of the sun reflecting off Lake Te Anau’s surrounding mountains was quite spectacular:

After watching the early morning sunrise, my wife and I walked back across the street to our caravan park and made breakfast before setting out to explore Te Anau. There really isn’t a whole lot to the city of Te Anau other then the basics that holidayers like us need such as restaurants, grocery stores, petrol stations, caravan park, etc. This was something we actually liked because it kept the city from becoming overflowing with tourists like its Queenstown counterpart:

Here is tip for everyone; in downtown Te Anau there is a pizza parlor that I recommend checking out if you like home made pizza like I do:

Overall I wasn’t impressed with the quality of the restaurants in New Zealand but my wife and I liked this place.

We next decided to take a walk along the lake to the local wildlife park which is only a couple of kilometers outside of town. The walk was quite pleasant with the beautiful weather and large quantities of ducks to keep us company along the trail:

Along the way we saw this statue of a man by the name of Quintin MacKinnon who was the first person to reach the legendary Milford Sound overland from Te Anau in 1888:

The route MacKinnon forged to Milford Sound which is now one of New Zealand’s most recognized icons, is called the Milford Track:

This track is considered by many to be one the “Finest Walks in the World“.  The track is 53.5 kilometers land and It takes four days to hike the Milford Track.  Reservations must be made in advance which is done to limit the number of hikers on the trail.  Additionally hikers may only hike in one direction, from Te Anau to Milford Sound and have to say in lodges at designated rest points along the way.  I try to make a reservation as an independent walker on the track nearly a year in advance and all the slots were bought up already during the timeframe I was going to be in New Zealand.

There was plenty of guided tours slots open though which are extremely expensive to book.  It costs anywhere from roughly $1,700 – $4,000 for a guided walk on the track depending on what time of the year and level of accomodation is purchased.  That kind of money would pay for the entire cost of my campervan and then some. So I passed on the hike this time, but I am going to go back to New Zealand one day to do this walk.

From the statue we continued on around the lake taking the incredibly scenic views:

After a few more minutes of walking we eventually reached the Te Anau Wildlife Centre:

This wildlife park is filled with the various birds that call this area of New Zealand home.  The most famous bird in this area is not the kiwi which is obviously the most famous bird in New Zealand but the Kea:

The Kea is New Zealand’s mountain parrot and are known for being extremely intelligent.  The Kea is known as being one of the most intelligent if not the most intelligent bird in the world.  This intelligence is what gets these birds in trouble because they are highly social and inquisitive.  They are known for getting into trash cans, letting the air out of tires, destroying windshield wipers, taking shoes and supplies from campers, etc.

These birds are a little bigger then an Australian cockatoo and are only found in this remote corner of New Zealand.  There numbers used to be much larger but are now a protected species because only 1,000 – 5,000 of the birds are estimated to survive in the wild today.  There numbers decreased due to the killing of the birds by European immigrants who were annoyed by their behavior as well as their tendency to hunt in groups to kill sheep.  Yes that is right these birds will work together to kill something as large as a sheep.

Another popular bird at the Wildlife Centre is the Takahe:

The Takahe is a flightless bird that was thought to be extinct until 1948 when it was rediscovered in some remote grasslands in the mountains Fiordland area of Southwest New Zealand.  Loss of habitat and introduced predators are what have decimated and continue to threaten the remaining Takahe population in New Zealand.

Besides checking out the native animals located at the wildlife park, I kept finding myself looking back to take in the incredible view over the lake from the park:

Lake Te Anau really is quite a beautiful lake and the second largest in New Zealand behind only Lake Taupo.  Besides a great view of the lake there was also a lot of local flowers that could be seen at the wildlife park as well:

After finishing checking out the Te Anau Wildlife Centre my wife and I walked back to town in order to board a boat tour we had booked earlier in the day.  The boat we took out on the lake was actually quite large and probably had well over one hundred people on it as it set out across the lake:

The further the boat proceeded down the lake the more spectacular the scenery becomes:

It was no easy feat trying to take these pictures on a swaying boat, but I was actually able to get some pretty nice shots of the surrounding mountains:

Part of the boat tour on Lake Te Anau is an excursion to a glow worm cave.  The boat pulls up to a pier where everybody gets off and walks to a visitor center that sits adjacent to a cave:

At the visitor center everyone sees a film about the cave and its glow worms.  From there the people on the boat are divided into groups of about ten people a piece and then are led into the cave by guides.  Unfortunately no pictures are allowed in the cave because the glow worms are very sensitive to light.  The entrance to the cave is actually quite small and I had to bend over quite a bit just to get in, but once inside the cave it is actually quite large.

The guide led our group along a walkway that took us deep into the cave.  Eventually the walkway ended and we boarded a boat that took our group even further into the cave, which is where we got to get a glimpse of the glow worms.  These worms glow in order to attract bugs towards them that get caught in these glue like strings that hand from the roof of the cave.  Floating around on a boat deep inside a cave in total darkness looking at these oddities of nature was a pretty cool experience.

Some people traveled from Queenstown on a day trip just to see these glow worms and arrived for the night time boat tour and were disappointed by the experience.  Taking a day trip from Queenstown just to see glow worms especially traveling at night on the lake with no opportunity to take in the incredible scenery would not make this trip worth it.  However, for anyone staying in Te Anau definitely take a day time boat tour of the lake and stop and see the glow worms because it is one of the many great things to see in the Te Anau area.

Next Posting: The Road to Milford Sound

Prior Posting: The Road to Te Anau

On-Walkabout On: The Road to Te Anau

Published on December 26, 2008 in New Zealand. 0 Comments Tags: , .

After spending a few day at New Zealand’s South Island tourist Mecca of Queenstown my wife and I decided to hit the road once again and head for our next destination on our planned itinerary which is the gateway to the legendary Milford Sound, the small village of Te Anau.  To get to Te Anau from Queenstown we had to drive South around Lake Wakatipu and then West across the Eyre Mountains, before going a short distance North to Te Anau:

The mountains along the road going South from Queenstown are initially very steep and snow capped:

However, once we began to reach the Southern portion of Lake Wakatipu, the mountains were significantly less rugged with little evidence of snow on them:

This is how the view down Lake Wakatipu looks from its South end near the city of Kingston looking back up the lake towards Queenstown:

This Google Earth image gives further perspective on how long this lake is and its changing topography:

Lake Wakatipu is a glacier carved lake that is 80 kilometers long which is the longest in New Zealand and has a maximum depth of 230 meters which makes it New Zealand’s third largest lake by water mass.  If anyone is wondering the largest lake in New Zealand my wife and I had already visited earlier in our tour, which is Lake Taupo back on New Zealand’s North Island. The second largest lake is the one we were heading for now, Lake Te Anau.

Past Lake Wakatipu the highway begins to head Westward and cross the Eyre Mountains which are significantly smaller and less rugged then mountains further west:

This area is classic New Zealand farm country with plenty of crops being grown and sheep grazing in lush green fields:

Once we traversed over the Eyre Mountains and were nearing Te Anau, the terrain suddenly turned into a treeless sage brush desert:

This desert actually lasted until we reached the outskirts of Te Anau where the mountains became more rugged and lush green grass once again carpeted the ground:

And of course the lush greeness of this area supported a large number of cattle that could be seen grazing all over the area:

Just before sunset we arrived in the city of Te Anau.  Te Anau is much smaller then Queenstown with less then 2,000 people living in the city compared to the over 10,000 people who live in Queenstown.  Additionally there are far less tourists in Te Anau compared to Queenstown which for us anyway made the city seem more laid back and not as hectic.

My wife and I checked into a local caravan park that was across the street from Te Anau’s beutiful lake that it shared its name with:

Lake Te Anau is not completely surrounded by mountains but the ones that do border the lake are quite scenic:

Google Earth doesn’t have high quality imagery yet of the Te Anau area but even in this low imagery picture you can see how half the lake is bordered with mountains while the other half borders the city and its surrounding grasslands:

My wife and I stayed on the shore of the lake to watch the sun slowly set behind the mountains:

Quite a spectacular sight as sun finally lowered behind the mountains:

The sunset was quite a sight and a good way to begin what would be our last few days holidaying in beautiful New Zealand.

Next Posting: Around Lake Te Anau

Prior Posting: Video of Queenstown