My mom came to visit for two weeks recently and a lot took place, so I'm breaking it all up into two posts.
Just a couple days after finishing up work with Conservation Volunteers NZ I was able to check out of the backpackers hostel for what I knew was going to be something a little more comfortable for a couple of weeks with my mom. Clean beds and bathrooms along with real and tasty food coming my way for two weeks. I was in heaven.
We started in Christchurch for a few days where we walked about town in the rain on the first day to take a look at all the galleries. We visited the Christchurch Cathedral, the city museum, and spent some time at the film festival (where we saw that classic "The Human Centipede"). We had a little tour around the city and drove up into the mountains where we saw it snowing!
Probably the most fun we had was at the Antarctic Center. Who knew that Christchurch was the main hub for almost all every country that had a base on Antarctica. You're a lot closer to the South Pole than you think down here, and the center had all sorts of information about the history of exploration down there, a look into what life down there is like today, and they even have pictures sent back to the center regularly to update everyone (we even saw a picture taken the very same day we visited). They have a storm simulator too; you get a special jacket and walk into a room with snow and they turn off the lights and make it extremely windy to the point where its below 0 degrees F. They also have lots of info about and house penguins. I had no idea how many species existed.
The two of us were going to explore the entire south island during my mother's two week stay, so we figured the easiest way was to drive around most of the time and maybe schedule a flight somewhere. I took the reigns on driving, and driving on the opposite side of the car and the road is even weirder than you can imagine. It definitely takes a little getting used to. But I managed and we left Christchurch and headed down to Dunedin where we stayed at a lovely B&B, got a tour of the city from a fellow who had spent his entire life there, and took a fantastic train ride up into the mountains and back that also scared the heck out of my mother as at one point we were allowed to walk across the train tracks over a bridge before the train went. Did I mention the bridge was almost 500ft above a rive gorge? My mom was not happy.
Two days later we made it to Te Anau, a small little town that had about three places open. We had two objectives in this town, the first to visit the glow worm caves. Getting to the caves involved boating along Lake Te Anau, which is right next to Fiordland National Park. The lake was beautiful, perfectly still, and on average had a depth of 800ft. The deepest parts were 1400ft. Sadly, upon our arrival to the caves, we were informed that a huge storm had come through the mountains the night before, causing tons of excess water in the caves, and we could not take the small boat into the inner caves to see the glow worms. Disappointing, but we did get to walk in through some parts of the caves--which was nice--and we did get our money back. Woohoo, free tour.
Our second day in Te Anau had us taking a tour up and through Fiordland National Park to see the Milford Sound. We took a bus ride up to the sound with several stops along the way to take in the incredible scenery (think giant open fields from Lord of the Rings), and we got to listen to every bit of tour info twice because we were on the Japanese bus with their interpreter (but she was actually very nice and always took pictures of families). The mountains were just incredible, with snow caps and waterfalls as far as you could see.
The ride up, however, was nothing compared to what we saw while boating on the sound. Right off the bat we saw a family of dolphins in the water, including tow baby dolphins. We spotted a penguin and saw a pack of seals near the end of the trip. But the scenery on this ride was unlike anything I've seen before. Mountain upon mountain darting into the water. Scenery you thought only a computer could generate for a movie was right in front of us. It was cloudy at first but soon they moved away to create the perfect amount of clouds to allow some perspective. You know how sometimes certain scenery seems fake because it's just so big and seems too perfect? That is what everything seemed like on this boat trip. Just stunning. We even took the boat right up to the bottom of a massive waterfall. Ever been standing almost right under one that's about 500ft high? Another unique experience. Just take a look at the pictures I'll provide because there really is no better way to explain everything.
Ok that's it for week one. Check back soon for week two.
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