Dunedin, Mount Cook, and Lake Tekapo

Mount Cook. At 3,754 meters, it eats climbers on occasion.

After a few days of taking in the views of the remote beaches in the Catlins we headed north, back towards civilization. Our next stop was Dunedin, a city on the east coast. As we'd been roughing it for a few days we decided to recharge our batteries and take a hot shower, so we camped at the local RV park.

We headed to the city's museum, where Amy and Amelia found some nifty outfits. They toured the museum dressed like this:

My girls, dressed as settlers. Fetching, eh?


During our stay in Dunedin we heard about a "castle" built by a local businessman about a hundred years back and we decided to check it out one afternoon. Back in the 19th century, the risk of invasion from medieval armies was small, so the castle was really more of a crenellated mansion. It was certainly worth visiting, though, as it had been built by local craftsmen and lovingly restored. The gardens, in particular, were amazing.

The gardens at the castle. Gardens do well here due to the nuclear-grade sunlight and mild temps.

Our next stop in Dunedin was the impressive Otago Museum (Otago is the name of the region). Part of the museum housed a multistory rainforest environment complete with a swarm of butterflies which delighted the kids and left Amy ducking for cover.

Apparently fear of flying insects isn't genetic; I won't be surprised if this gal turns out to be an entomologist.

The fossil exhibit at the Otago museum was the highlight for me; there were moa bones (remember those huge, flightless birds hunted to extinction by the Maori?) found in local caves as well as NZ's largest fossil, a really aggressive looking aquatic animal with big teeth. The kids got a big kick out of the lifelike crocodile on the museum floor.

Quinn, enthusiastically demonstrating how a crocodile goes "snap!"

We left Dunedin and soon came across the Moeraki boulders, a bunch of unusually spherical boulders which formed about 65 million years ago. These boulders started out on the muddy sea floor as small crystals of lime with a bit of an electical charge; over about 4 million years they slowly attracted other minerals in spherical layers. The sea floor was eventually pushed up above the water's surface and you can now see boulders being eroded out of the side of the hills near the ocean. Most of these are about 8 feet wide. It's really a neat sight.

Notice the shattered boulders in the background, they are all essentially hollow.


Our next stop was Oamaru (Wa-ma-roo). This was a tiny town on the coast that really caught us by surprise. The town was built from local limestone and it featured one of the best gardens we'd come across in NZ (that's saying a lot). We were camped right next to the gardens and had a nice time walking through there, though I didn't take too many pics. Here's Quinn enjoying himself at the garden playgrounds:

My little bald man. He would later begin referring to slides as "weeee!" for obvious reasons.

Another neat thing in Oamaru was a local blue penguin colony. We bought tickets to the nightly show; people sit in bleachers and watch the penguins swim ashore while listening to park rangers talk about the cute little things. They swim up to 50km a day and return to that spot to feed their young. The chicks practically attack their parents as soon as they waddle ashore, exhausted.

Around this time Amelia developed a fascination with marriage, asking me and Amy about our wedding nonstop for about 3 days. She got a huge kick out of playing the bride, and we fashioned a veil for her from a napkin. She wore this for most of the day.

My girls on Amelia's first wedding day.

From Oamaru we headed inland, almost all the way across the island. Our destination was Mount Cook, the tallest peak in the country. On the way there we passed a lake saturated with minerals, resulting in a deep blue color that defied the imagination.

I was mobbed by sandflies while taking this pic, so I hope you enjoy it.

We had debated whether or not it would be worth the detour towards Mt. Cook, and we ended up being very happy that we decided to do it. The area was one of the most impressive we visited during our trip. The base camp was located on flat ground (carved out by glaciers, of course) and surrounded by incredible mountains. The mountains, incidentally, were part of the same range as those containing the Fox and Franz-Joseph glaciers which we'd seen whilst traveling down the west coast weeks earlier.

I don't know if it made international news or not, but two Japanese climbers were caught in a storm on Mt. Cook about a week before we arrived. Sadly, one of them didn't make it down. This isn't unheard of as it's a popular climbing destination and it's also a serious peak. Our babysitter, Kirsty, told us that her dad has climbed it a few times (she declined his offer to join him).

Amy and Quinn in front of a glacier-covered mountain range near Mt. Cook. They are standing on a huge lateral moraine which is basically a big pile of rocks deposited by a glacier. You can see other huge moraines in the background.

Me and my girl in front of Mt. Cook. Note the U-shaped valley; if you've paid attention then you'll know how that got there.

We stayed here for two days and we really couldn't get enough of the area. There were lots of day hikes in the area and we found one with two swing bridges over roaring rapids which led to great views of Mt. Cook. This was our favorite hike in NZ (there are better ones, but not the sort of thing to do with two toddlers).

A view looking away from Mt. Cook. The valley was truly stunning.

We had been rained out weeks earlier when we tried to visit Fox glacier, but we managed to get our fill of glaciers in the few days we camped here. The glaciers were in constant motion and you could hear them popping and cracking. It sounded like thunder echoing through the valleys. Amy woke up one night to the rumbling and thought that a landslide was going to hit us.

Family pic! Happy about it, Amelia?

A close-up of the crevasses formed as the glacier moves over the rock.

The girls playing in front of Mt. Cook.

The kids amused themselves that evening by playing house with a bunch of rocks. Yes, Quinn later managed to pull the house down on himself but avoided serious injury.


Our next stop was Lake Tekapo, renowned for the cute little stone church built on the edge of a gorgeous lake. The water here was an amazing shade of blue and the trout in the lake were gigantic.

Quinn points out the church, just visible on the peninsula.

The church itself is tiny but picturesque as it's constructed from uncut local stones and situated so that the view out of it's altar window is really pleasing to the eye (sorry, running out of synonyms for "beautiful" again).

The view from in front of the church.

Amy and the kids playing in a field in front of the church, with the clouds just starting to cover the mountains in the background.

We left Lake Tekapo with mixed feelings because we knew that the end of our journey was near. It was exciting to think about living in a house again, but Amy and I both loved spending so much time together as a family. It certainly was a challenge at times, but it was worth all of the effort.

Here's one of the last pictures taken on the trip. This was the nightly routine; we bought the books on sale in a small-town library and read them to the light of headlamps.

The Catlins

One of the many deserted beaches in the Catlins.

We headed south after leaving Fjordland, making a beeline for the southern coast. This part of our trip would lead us off of the typical path taken by most people visiting the South Island. We were heading into a really remote area known as the Catlins.

As we approached the coast we stopped at some limestone caves to have a look. Amy and the kids decided to stay behind and I headed in alone to have a look around. That move ranks pretty high up there in the Stupid Things I've Done category but thankfully it all worked out all right. I couldn't get my camera to focus in the darkness of the cave but I found graffiti there from the late 1800's and some really neat limestone formations. After scrambling through the caves for 300 meters I found myself staring at a huge underground pool of water which completely blocked the exit. I had to turn around and try and reverse my steps (harder than it sounds) and ended up popping out of a third entrance to the cave. Whew.

The entrance to the cave. The kids and Amy went in about 20 meters, enough to spot some glow worms and convince Amelia that she was not going to take up spelunking.

After spending an uneventful night in a small southern town, we grabbed some provisions and headed down the coast into the really remote areas. As we approached the Catlins reserve, traffic was stopped by an errant flock of sheep:


By this point in the trip, we could see Stewart Island, the third of the major New Zealand islands. Didn't realize NZ had 3 major islands, did you? Most people don't talk about it much because it's essentially uninhabited. The whole thing is a nature preserve and the weather...well, you can probably guess what the weather is like being located that far south.

Given our location, we were taken completely by surprise when we came across a bluegrass festival being held in the middle of a sheep pasture.


It was surreal listening to Johnny Cash and an assortment of Appalachian music being sung in a Kiwi accent in South Nowhere, but everyone had a great time. It was laid back; there was no admission fee and the men's bathroom was a sheet of plastic strung between two stakes in the middle of a pasture.

You can make out the stage on the left and some of the local residents (sheep) on the right.

Amelia and me in between dances.

Quinn enjoying some hummus while sporting Amelia's hat.

After a relaxing afternoon of music we continued on to a beach in the Catlins. We camped on top of a hill overlooking the Southern Ocean. The views were really nice and the wildlife in this area was impressive.

The view from our campsite.

The sun came out the next day and we headed to the beach. Amy and I got our feet wet just to see what the water was like; it was painful but we did get a good laugh out of it. The kids then went to work digging a big hole.


Soon a sea lion swam up out of the ocean and started cruising around the beach. You can see him in the background of this picture:


It wasn't long before we had to scoop up the kids because the sea lion liked the look of their hole. He looks sweet enough in the pics but sea lions can be fairly nasty if you get too close.


This wasn't our last run in with the local fauna. Sea lions regularly visited the beach and a rare species of tiny dolphin also came in remarkably close to shore. The dolphins occasionally play around with people brave enough to swim in the frigid water.

Amy keeping an eye on another sea lion.

Right next to the campsite was a spot that I'd been looking forward to seeing; a petrified forest from the Cretaceous. 270 million years back, some flooding had covered a forest in silt and the entire thing became petrified. The ocean eroded away the covering rock and you can now walk around and look at the stumps and logs when the tide is out. It's still possible to make out the growth rings in the wood. Amelia really got a kick out of this.

Amelia checking out a petrified log.

Soon a thick fog rolled in and blanketed the area. It made for some really neat pictures, though.

One of my favorite photos from the trip; Amelia checking out the petrified forest and the coast.

Quinn and Amy playing in the pools at the petrified forest.

The sunsets here were nothing short of spectacular. Here are a few photos I took of the Southern Ocean at dusk:





Up next: back towards civilization. Dunedin and the butterfly exhibit, the extraordinary Mount Cook, and our return to Christchurch.

Fjordland and Milford Sound

Our first glimpse of Fjordland. The glaciers created steep cliffs and U-shaped valleys.

We packed up the van after our night at Lake Te Anau and headed north into Fjordland towards Milford Sound. This was a bit daunting because the sandflies at the lake were rather intense and we had heard that the area we were entering had the worst sandflies in the country. As we entered the first major valley and caught a glimpse of the mountains, we got the feeling that something special lay ahead.

I once had a conversation with my brother Preston about this area after he visited years ago. I asked him what the single best spot in NZ was and he replied, "Milford Sound." I asked him why and he said something along the lines of, "I dunno, there are just a lot of steep mountains and stuff." I remembered wondering at the time what was so special about that.

The thing is, he was right. There just isn't any way to impart to you what this area is like. Everywhere you look, and I do mean everywhere, mountains rise straight up for more than a mile. You read that right. One mile, straight up. It's like something out of a fantasy novel. The cliffs are so sheer in most places that no earth clings to them; all of the rainwater (and there's plenty of that: it rains almost 200 days a year on average) cascades down the cliffs, creating waterfalls nearly a mile high.


Other waterfalls originate from the glaciers which are still perched atop these massive mountains. It was all I could do not to drive off of the road as I craned my neck out the window, trying to get a look at the mind-boggling scenery.


There are no real towns in this area of the country. This makes good sense because there's just enough flat land for a single road to snake through the mountains, and the sandflies are indeed awful. The main destination for people visiting fjordland is Milford Sound, which isn't really a sound at all because it's a fjord. Sounds are big valleys carved by rivers which fill with seawater; fjords are big valleys carved by glaciers which fill with seawater. The guys who named this place took their best guess but they happened to guess wrong; the name stuck anyway.

Once we arrived at Milford Sound we booked passage on one of the many scenic cruises in the area. The captain acted as the tour guide and did a wonderful job of teaching us about the geography of the fjord. We saw a "hanging valley" formed by one glacier emptying into an existing fjord; this created a waterfall 500 feet high which sounds impressive except that the wall of rock next to it continues straight up for another 4,700 feet or so. The fjord itself is half a mile deep, meaning that the glaciers which carved these valleys had to be impressive indeed.

Quinn checking things out on the cruise.

Above: The 500 foot high waterfall is that tiny looking thing near the bottom of the picture. The waterfall comes out of the "hanging valley" and you can see its characteristic U-shape. Look closely and you'll see a 3-story cruise ship at the bottom right of the pic, which shows you the scale.

It's tough to make out, but the horizontal striations in the cliffs show where the glacier pressed against the rock.

Amy and Quinn on the cruise.

After our tour we headed back south towards the coast, camping as soon as we reached flat land. The campsite was gorgeous; we were right next to a beautiful stream and surrounded by a beech forest with those monstrous mountains looming in the distance.

The view from our campsite.

Quinn and me before the sandflies hit.

It was here, in this idyllic setting, that the funniest moment of the trip occured. Around dusk the sandflies came out in force. They were terrible. If you opened the door of the van even for a second, a dozen of those bastards would invade and bite everyone in sight. We therefore decided to stay in the van until morning.

This was cool until Amelia announced that she needed to pee. It sounds like a little thing, right? Just take the kid outside for a minute and let her pee. This would have resulted in dozens of painfully itchy bites for everyone in addition to a sleepless night spent swatting at mosquitos and sandflies. We therefore decided to let her pee in a piece of tupperware which we used to store cleaning supplies. Amelia did a fine job peeing in the tupperware but she neglected to inform us that she also needed to poo; we discovered this in due course and the resulting situation was so bad that we couldn't help but laugh.

Our camping spot. Pic taken prior to the Tupperware Poo Incident.

Next up: the Catlins, a bluegrass festival at the bottom of the world, and a close encounter with a sea lion.