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| Bullers Mollymawk (An albatross) |
We spent an enjoyable couple of days on Stewart Island, an hour's ferry ride off the south of the South Island. And after another 15 min boat trip we arrived on the much smaller forested island of Ulva, where we saw several bird species, including parakeets, tom tit, robin, wekas and a kaka. Ulva is "predator free" and has no rabbits, possums, stoats, ferrets, rats or weasels, all of which are "introduced species" that have been eradicated so that they cannot eat the young birds or birds' eggs. |
| Weka - Kiwi like but shorter bill |
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| Parakeet |
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| NZ Wood Pigeon |
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| Fantail |
That evening we went out tracking the elusive Kiwi (bird not person) on Stewart Island, from 9:30pm until about 12:30am, and were lucky enough to see about 4 of them, including a female squawking her head off, resulting in a male rushing to her side. (Kiwi for 'get here you useless individual'?)
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| Kiwi at midnight - promise you it is there ! |
We then spent 5 days in Fiordland National Park, the largest in NZ and also a UNESCO Heritage site, on the southwest coast. Our visit to Doubtful Sound was wonderful, comprising a boat ride across Manapouri Lake, a bus trip over Wilmot Pass in the Southern Alps, then the boat trip along the fjord out to the sea and back. And all on a dry, sunny day in a part of the world where they get 6-9m (yes, metres!!) of rainfall a year. The scenery was amazing and hard to do justice in photos. The icing on the cake was fur seals and their pups on a rocky island at the mouth of the sound. The day we did this trip, 15th March, also happened to be the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook discovering the sound, and he named it thus because he considered it doubtful that having sailed up into the sound it would be possible to sail out again against the wind.
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| Doubtful Sound from Wilmot Pass |
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| Doubtful Sound |
Milford Sound 2 days later also started with a bus trip along Lake Te Anau and over the Southern Alps, because the road that would have been open to private traffic such as us and would have allowed us to camp at the sound, had been washed away by heavy rains last month (1 metre in 36 hours!!). The boat trip around the fjord, which is a tenth the size of Doubtful Sound, was spectacular, albeit much busier, but the cloudless blue sky made up for it. There aren't many places in the world where you can see a glacier, a rainforest and a fjord at the same time.
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| Magnificent Milford Sound |
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| Bishops Mitre in Milford Sound |
Mary's navigating continues apace, with us doing 3 laps of one campsite last week before we found our berth. So she's now been relegated to not only complicated routes, but also driving into campsites.
Re Covid-19, it seems we will have to self-isolate in either a campervan or hotel, if we're even allowed into Oz in 5 weeks' time ... but who knows what might happen between now and then. We hope you and your families are all safe and healthy.
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| View across Lake Manapouri |
PS About the sandflies - think of Scottish midges on steroids. Not as numerous but with bites that come up as if you had a contracted plague (I know - not funny in the current climate).