Been a while since I posted. Made it to Nelson, where I stayed with family friends Randall and Lisa. It was nice to take it easy for a few days. The area they live in is extremely lovely. I'm sure it has it's problems, but they are hard to imagine. They were charming hosts and stuffed me with sausages and wine, and feijoa cider whatever that may be. We drove up along the coast of Tasman Bay and Golden Bay(tragically renamed from Murderer's Bay, but better for real estate prices no doubt) to Wharariki Beach which has some pretty good dunes and crazy sea caves. The tide was low enough that we got into one about an arms breadth wide and 25 feet high that twisted down to the ocean. For one second in the middle there was no light, just ankle deep water running down . . . somewhere. Exciting.
We were going to go boating on the Abel Tasman the next day but we decided to stay off the open ocean due to the Tsunami, which failed to materialize. Still, it was fun to get out on Nelson harbor in Randall's jetboat.
Lisa advised me to head down to Milford Sound as quickly as possible in order to try and catch a patch of sunlight predicted at the end of the week, so I raced down the coast. Stopping only to visit a brewery and a glacier. The brewery was a bit lame, but the glacier was amazing. The Franz Josef glacier receives 20-80 meters of snow at its head every year and so plunges down towards the ocean at speeds that can scarcely be called glacial, managing to dip into the temperate rainforest before it can melt. I only had an afternoon to hike up on to it, but it was definitely impressive. I'll have to rely on pictures to tell the rest of that story.
Got into Queenstown fairly late but still managed to hit the club before my 7:50 am departure to Milford Sound. Despite the weathermen's assurances, it was a grey, dismal morning, spitting rain all the way. Lots of low clouds as we pulled into Fjordland National park. We saw the mountain range cast as the Misty Mountains for the upcoming Hobbit films, but it was more mist than mountains. Just as people started grumbling about wasting their time and money the mists slowly began to part like a cotton ball be teased apart, lingering in shreds here and there throughtout the rest of the day, but letting plenty of sunshine through. The rain meant that some of the small waterfalls along the steep glacial valleys were running at full force. The scenery was literally mind-blowing. I had seen pictures, but I guess I've never really believed that any place like this existed, but it does. Somehow, the guy behind me managed to snore loudly through the whole ride. The sound(actually a fjord) is equally impressive. Ringed by snowcapped peaks, its steep sides are covered with a rainforest that just barely clings to the rocks in a mat of intertwined roots. Strong rainstorms occasionally cause whole sections of it to slip loose and plunge into the sea. A number of water falls plunge what seems like hundreds of meters directly into the ocean. To top it all of, our boat was greeted by a pod of bottlenose dolphins. Even the bus driver was impressed by our luck.
