Karen and Tom Wanderings

And, sadly, our trip to New Zealand came to end.  Basically, it was 4 weeks of awesomeness.  An incredibly beautiful place, with seemingly infinite variety.  BIG country, and very rural.  Sticking to just the South Island proved to be a great decision for us, allowing a less hurried pace and flexibility.  And we still left plenty of things undone.  Here are some parting thoughts, and a few more photos. Statistics  Days:  27 Different places slept:  18 Driving Distance:  2,900 km (1,600 mi) Tramping Distance: 185 km (110 mi) Tramping Elevation Gain/Loss:  5,200 m (17,100 ft)   Distance flown:  25,100 km (15,100 mi) Misc. Travel Tips Our go-to guidebook for activities was NZ Frenzy - South Island, by Scott Cook (3rd Edition).  The book's focus is on finding off-the-beaten-track activities, and how to beat (or at least minimize) the crowds.  It spans a wide range of difficulty levels.  An...

For the final few days of our New Zealand visit, we based ourselves in Nelson ... at a single motel, no less.  The weather was mixed, so on the not-too-good days, we visited a few sites around town.  The obligatory cathedral.  An art gallery.  The Center of New Zealand, which is a viewpoint at the top of a steep hill, that is, not surprisingly, located physically in the center of NZ.  And an arboretum (Queen's Garden), which was beautiful and calm.  Plus, we got in a bike ride around Rabbit Island, not too far out of town.  It even required a ride on a rinky-dink ferry for all of about 100 yds! Pedestrian/Cycling Bridge near Rabbit Island Nelson suburbs from The Center of New Zealand.  (literally a mile from town) Impressive stone path and pagoda, Queen's Garden Bridge and Pond, Queen's Garden Window detail, Nelson Cathedral More Photos We had one spectacular day (warm, sunny, calm winds), and we took full advan...

When humans first arrived in New Zealand around 1300 AD, the islands had existed in almost total isolation for millions of years.  There were no land mammals, but endless flavors of birds.  Without the threat of predation from the ground, many birds (including the famed kiwi) evolved to be flightless, and filled niches typically taken by mammals.  Moreover, many evolved to be huge.  For example, the moa (think of them as the cows of the bird world) were flightless and stood up to 12' tall, and the Haast's eagle (which preyed upon the moas) had a wingspan of up to 10'.  It was a garden of eden for birds.  The early European visitors described the noise level from all the birds as approaching deafening. Unfortunately, the current birdlife is a mere pittance of it's past glory, with many species either threatened or extinct.  When the first humans (Maori) arrived from Polynesia by boat (cira 1300 AD), they introduced rats, which had a heyday wit...

With the rain having subsided, we headed off from Picton for a 3 day tramp on the Queen Charlotte Track.  The hour-long boat trip was uneventful.  The weather was pretty socked in ... low clouds still clinging to the steep wooded hillsides that drop into the water.  Very reminiscent of some of the Puget Sound waterways.  The captain informed us that the weather and seas were so bad the day before that they couldn't even make the trip to our intended start point (Ship's Cove).  That, and the 4 inches of rain that fell, convinced us that we had made the right call to delay the trip.   All in all, we were pretty lucky.  The North Island got hammered and had epic flooding! Tramping the Queen Charlotte Track is a different experience than most or all of the other 8 Great Tracks.  First of all, it's on privately-owned land, so you have to pay a fee just to use the track.  The up side is that there are nice lodges with restaurants you can cho...