I am starting my summary of my New Zealand trip by apologising to New Zealand. How I wronged you when I planned to visit when I had time as an old and potentially infirm person! I didn’t realise you would have such beautiful and diverse landscapes with easily accessible wildlife. I shouldn’t have waited until I got a free trip to go!



Queenstown was a lovely location for a conference. It’s a complete holiday town, though, filled with young people speaking a great variety of languages and striding around in adventure clothes. The photo below demonstrates why I sometimes had trouble paying attention to less interesting speakers.



I had lots of good conversations, my presentation went well and then I joined talisen for a driving holiday around the South Island.

I’ve wanted to see a wild albatross for years. At least since reading Jenny Nimmo’s Ultramarine as a child, a book that had me temporarily agreeing that Albatross was a good name for a person. Basically the only thing I knew about the South Island before I planned this trip was that it was home to one of the world’s only mainland breeding colonies of albatrosses. So of course we started by driving to Dunedin and the nearby Otago Peninsula. I was not disappointed. After a day driving around the lovely peninsula we arrived at Taiaroa Heads where we were lucky enough to see Northern Royal Albatrosses sitting on their nests, cute chicks when their parents stood up, and then another two flying around the observatory. As usual I was too busy gaping and looking through my binoculars to take good photos but here is one that shows an albatross sailing past us:



They are huge birds, with wingspans almost three metres long. They are (like many other albatross species) endangered and the staff is kept busy trying to keep introduced animals like stoats away from the chicks. We were also excited to see New Zealand fur seals* and they were clearly delighted to see us:



We then headed off around the Southern portion of the island, stopping to see more seals/sea lions along the way in the Catlins, including ridiculously cute and round cubs. I was impressed by the amount of beautiful and undeveloped coast:



Some of it was beautiful in a way reminiscent of photos of Ireland (I have not been to Ireland yet so cannot comment on the reality):



We then arrived at Lake Manapouri, our base for exploring the famous Milford Sound.** The day started off foggy, which was a bit disappointing as the tops of the mountains in the fjord couldn’t be seen. However braving the clouds and cold was made completely worthwhile by the appearance of a large pod of dusky dolphins at the mouth of the Sound. These were apparently unusually gregarious for the Milford pod and spent ages swimming and throwing themselves out of the water around us. Not only was this wonderful, but we also saw some of the world’s rarest penguins, the Fjordland Crested Penguins, swimming about 100 metres from the boat! Thanks to my trusty binoculars I was able to get a great view of these beautiful birds (they have very cute yellow eyebrows). I can report that swimming penguins are very cute, especially when they waggle their behinds when floating along. I couldn’t stop smiling on the way back through the fjord but soon was even more cheered by the clouds clearing to reveal why Milford Sound is such a popular destination – it was stunning. Eg:



After this we scooted up the West Coast, passing more beautiful lakes, rivers and mountains. However here we struck our first bad luck of the trip – it was raining too much for our planned heli-hike on Fox Glacier (this was the extravagance of the trip that was going to cost as much as accommodation for the whole time!). Well, the pilot actually reported that he could get the group up to the glacier but probably not down again later, so I was certainly in accord with the cancellation, having vivid pictures of an Alive type scenario in my mind. I have always hankered to go in a helicopter but I will just have to do it another time! It was still interesting to walk to the foot of the glacier – I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen one before! Fortunately, neither of these things happened to us (sorry for dodgy sizing):



We then drove through more picturesque scenery in Canterbury to reach the South Island’s largest city, Christchurch. Due to me being lazy, let me just say that it, too, was fun and near pretty places, including the Banks Peninsula where the wonderful Margaret Mahy lives! Oh and New Zealand’s wineries were very nice too, even if we didn’t get up to the Marlborough district where some of my favourite sauvignon blancs are from.

Regular readers will know I am a squib when it comes to the cold. I admit I may have been heard to complain a bit in New Zealand but the weather wasn’t freezing. Just ridiculously cold for summer. I kept catching myself thinking "that would be a nice place to camp when it’s warmer" then realising this was it in terms of warmth. And the leaves are already turning on the trees! The long evenings were lovely, though, I've never experienced them before.

Some things about New Zealand were so similar to Australia, from the general feel of the place down to the traffic signal buttons, but others were different, like the accents and some other language things like using "wee" instead of small. The most obvious difference was the size. If you drove around Australia for a week you wouldn’t have seen very much! I definitely want to go back sometime to check out the places I missed and look for more wildlife.

*or possibly sea lions. They are both types of eared seals and look similar to me. I disapprove of these confusing names as one does not know whether to say "look at the seal!" or "sea lion!". I guess one could substitute "round, squidgy, lazy mammal!".

**obviously the European namers of things in NZ indulged in a bit of guesswork as this is actually a fjord (formed by a glacier) rather than a sound (formed by a river). OK, I didn’t know that before I caught a tour boat so perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on the namer :)



Sorry for the length of the post, I didn’t keep a travel journal and think that is reflected here! And really, it just makes up for the posts that would have happened when I was away. Reviews of recent books coming soon.

Update: Other photos - and yes there are a few - are here. If you would like to see the full set let me know and we'll add you to our friend's list.

Tags: animals, birds, travel