New Zealand Vacation

Wednesday, January 31:
Milford Sound

My Palm batteries are down to ½. [Ah, those were the good old days. Palm Pilots had monochrome LCD displays, and would last for weeks on a single charge. I was complaining the my batteries being half gone after a week of use.]

We took a short hike today along the Rainbow Reach Trek that runs along the Mararoa River. (Or was it the Waiau? Damn these Maori names!) I finally got to wear those hiking boots that took up half the space and weight in my suitcase.

Rainbow Reach Footbridge
Photo courtesy Google Images

The trek began with a suitably bouncy suspension footbridge, and followed along a high bluff above the river back towards Lake Manapouri. These were well prepared walking tracks through the forest with drainage ditches, steps up steeper slopes, and wooden walkways over marshy areas. The trail sometimes overlooks the river, sometimes backs away from precipitous wash-outs. The trees are 150 foot beeches with miniscule root systems in spongy soil. Occasionally, they fall over leaving neat 8' x 6' x 4' deep rectangular holes like graves. At long last, we were treated to insect sounds with the occasional bird call.

The travelers we met, said “Go to Milford Sound if for no other reason than the drive. We had already took and enjoyed the boat excursion to Doubtful Sound, so we took their advice. The drive was amazing. We pulled over by an overlook with an Imax-like panorama of river 500' below and peaks 800' above all within a similar horizontal distance from us. One kilometer later the road had dropped to river level where one had to look 60 degrees upwards to see the peaks. Close to the entrance to the Homer Tunnel, we again stopped at a siding to enjoy the keas. These dusky green parrots were utterly fearless of people, approaching, looking for handouts, and will-ing to rip the rubber gaskets off your tail lights if you didn’t pacify them with something tastier. The Homer Tunnel has no lights. Entering it from bright sunlight, your are virtually blind, and have to deal with the parade of tour busses coming from the other direction on the wrong side of the road, with scant inches of clearance to pass. The tunnel emerges on Cleddau Canyon about 2/3 of the way up the sheer wall. You are then treated to a 360° Imax view of sheer rock face on the far wall of the canyon, with rivulets of snowmelt running down them. You can't take a picture of this stuff; it won't fit in a camera.

The Chasm
Photo courtesy Google Images

Like in Picton, the road comes to the edge of the water and stops. Other than a visitors’ center, boat dock, and restaurant, there is virtually nothing there. We turned around and went back. We stopped off at a little side walking trip to see The Chasm: Here you stand on a bridge overlooking fairly ordinary looking rapids which suddenly drop into an impossibly deep & narrow gorge, bridged by a fallen boulder the size of a small bungalow, surrounding granite sculpted into fantastic freeform shapes of hollows and bubbles by the water’s scouring.

That evening we took a night boat trip on Manapouri to the Glow-worm caves. This is a huge underground system of limestone caverns that are home to an insect whose larva attaches itself to the ceiling and emits a phosphorescence to attract prey. The outermost passages of the system have been decked out with walkways and waterways where tour guides escort tourists in small sculls into the dark. It’s pretty neat stuff, but the effect is hard to set down in words.