We left the sunshine and blue skies of Okuru on the west
coast of the South Island for Fiordland where deep fiords penetrate
the coastal mountains, where it rains most of the time, a place so different
and beautiful that it was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1990. It’s in the far
southwest of the South Island, but there’s no coast road to Fiordland from
Okuru. We had to drive a circuitous route inland many kilometers, then south
through mountains and valleys of the Southern Alps and then west to Fiordland.
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| Haast River |
Leaving Okuru, we drove up the Haast River valley then east
on Highway 6 between snow-covered, 2,000-m (6,600-ft) peaks. The strikingly
blue Haast River flowed down a wide floodplain of weathered gray rocks, the outcome
of many years and miles tumbling downstream. Beyond its confluence with the
Landsborough River, the Haast turns 90 degrees south. As the valley narrowed,
the winding road climbed into the foothills. Near Makarora, the green pastures
and forests of the Wilkin River valley contrast strongly with the
snowy peaks and cobalt sky. Our route took us through stunning valleys where snow-capped
Southern Alps were reflected in the clear-blue waters of lakes Wanaka and Háwea. We were
on our way to Queenstown where I hoped to find a dentist to fix a loose crown (I had
tried, but couldn’t find a dentist on the sparsely populated west coast).
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| Wilkin River Valley |
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| Southern Alps reflected in Lake Wanaka |
Beyond Wanaka, we took the Crown Range Road along the
Cardrona River, the most direct route to Queenstown. A warning sign at the turnoff
for the Crown Range Road, one of the highest paved roads in New Zealand (1,121
m, 3,678 ft) (link),
advised vehicles with trailers not to take the road. The absence of large trucks
and campervans was noticeable. We passed a fence covered with brightly-colored bras
near Cardrona (link) and stopped to investigate. An interpretive sign said the purpose of the fence
was to raise awareness and money to fight breast cancer. Rande left a donation
in a pink can.
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| Bra fence near Cardrona |
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| Crown Range Road |
Vegetation along the 50-km (31-mi) Crown Range Road reminded
me of the high desert in parts of the western U.S. – brown bunch grasses and dense
clumps of common speargrass, an evergreen perennial endemic to New Zealand (link) that resembled a low-growing yucca. We stopped at Crown Saddle, the top of the
pass, to take in the view south to Lake Wakatipu, the longest lake in New
Zealand, with Queenstown in the distance. A low fence surrounding
the Pisa Conservation Area climbed the mountain behind us. Cattle dung outside the fence
attested to the Department of Conservation’s effort to keep cows out of the speargrass.
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| Common speargrass in the Pisa Conservation Area |
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| Looking towards Queenstown from Crown Saddle |
A commercial jet descending between Crown Saddle and the
mountains across the Arrow Valley surprised us; we looked down on the jet as it
passed on its way to an airport in Frankton. We followed it down through a succession
of 180-degree switchbacks. Negotiating the steep, sharp turns took
concentration – low gear all the way and judicious use of the brakes. The big
Mercedes did fine. The Dangerous Roads
blog says “This drive is not for the faint hearted…[it]…drops away to a
seemingly bottomless gorge” (link). Only later, perusing the fine print of our campervan rental agreement, did we
learn that it was prohibited to drive it on Crown Range Road.
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| Starbucks in Queenstown |
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| Fortune teller in Queenstown |
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| Statue of a large moa, now extinct, but once endemic to New Zealand |
We found a holiday park near the center Queenstown, a town
of 14,000. Wedged between the deep-blue Lake Wakatipu and steep hillsides
blanketed with houses scrambling up toward snow-covered peaks, it reminded me
of small cities in the European Alps. A vibrant, compact city, Queenstown attracts
a young, international crowd to its shops, restaurants and bars, and adventure
tourists to its outdoor activities, including skiing and snowboarding,
river-running, paragliding, mountain biking, bungee jumping and more (link).
We met a young man from North Carolina working in an outdoor-clothing shop who
had been in Queenstown for three months, and a young woman from Minnesota
working in a tourist agency who had been there for two months; both planned to stay
in New Zealand for a year. The town’s popularity with tourists and foreign
investors, coupled with its lack of developable land, have made it “…the least
affordable place in New Zealand to buy a property…” (link).
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| TSS Earnslaw at Queenstown dock |
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| Leaving Queenstown |
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| Deck winch on TSS Earnslaw |
The next day, Sunday, we took the 10:00 AM cruise on Lake
Wakatipu from Queenstown to Walter Peak Station, an historic sheep ranch, aboard
the TSS Earnslaw. Even though the weather was cool, windy and threatened
rain, lots of people turned out for the cruise. The lake, which is over 300 m
(1,000 ft) deep and 9-11 degrees C (48-52 degrees F), was covered with
whitecaps. The TSS Earnslaw (TSS stands for twin-screw steamship) makes the 1.5 hour-round trip run
four times a day and, except for our ship, the lake was deserted.
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| Engine room on the TSS Earnslaw |
The 51-m (168 ft) TSS
Earnslaw was built in 1911 in Dunedin
on the east coast of the South Island and named for Mt. Earnslaw in the
Southern Alps. The steamship was disassembled, the 6-mm (¼ in) thick steel hull
plates were numbered and everything was shipped by rail to Kingston at the
southern end of Lake Wakatipu where it was reassembled and motored to
Queenstown in 1912. The coal-fired steamship hauled cargo, livestock and
passengers to and from the remote farming communities around Lake Wakatipu. It
makes 10-12 knots on its two original 250-hp engines and consumes two dump
truck loads of coal each day. As more roads were built connecting outlying
areas to Queenstown in the 1930s, the steamship businesses on the lake
declined. The TSS Earnslaw began carrying tourists in the
1960s. It now travels the equivalent of once around the world each year while
never leaving the 80-km (50-mi) long lake (link).
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| Walter Peak Station on Lake Wakatipu |
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| Returning to the dock in Queenstown |
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| Loading coal on the TSS Earnslaw |
That afternoon, we visited Queenstown Gardens on Lake
Wakatipu. The first trees planted in the 1860s included Douglas fir, giant sequoia
and western hemlock from western North America. Tulips, cherry trees and
rhododendrons were in bloom. People were walking and biking on the paths and
generally enjoying the beautiful gardens.
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| Queenstown Gardens |
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| Giant sequoia in Queenstown Gardens |
We happened on the Scott Memorial installed in 1913 to honor
Robert Falcon Scott and the men of his expedition who died with him in
Antarctica in 1912 (link).
From the plaque on the memorial, Scott wrote:
…We arrived…with fuel for one hot meal and food for two days.
For four days we have been unable to leave the tent, the gale is howling about
us. We are weak, writing is difficult, but…I do not regret this journey…We took
risks; we knew we took them. Things have come out against us, and therefore we
have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still
to do our best to the last.
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| Memorial to Robert Falcon Scott in Queenstown Gardens |
Early Monday morning, I called Lumino Dentists and explained
to the office manager at that I had “a bit of an emergency” with a loose crown and
she got me in at 9:00 AM. Jamie, the dentist, was about my age. He pulled the
crown off and said I had broken the tooth, part of which was still attached to
the crown. He covered the tooth with a compound used to fill cavities and said
it would last until I got back to the U.S. We spent the rest of the visit talking
about U.S. and New Zealand politics, farming in NZ (the government does not
subsidize farmers), his family (he has an American wife and spent time in
California) and hunting and fishing. He hunts red deer-Roosevelt elk hybrids,
introduced French chamois, ducks, and other wildlife. He said Teddy Roosevelt
introduced elk into New Zealand; their hybrids with red deer, which are considered
pests in the wild, are raised commercially for venison.
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| Five Rivers cattle ranch with Eyre Mountains in the background |
Later, we left Queenstown on Highway 6 along Lake Wakatipu for
170-km (105-mi) drive south to Te Anau. A tailwind gusting over 60 km/hr (40
mph) pushed the big Mercedes along. When we turned west on Highway 94, the wind
hit us broadside and the campervan lurched sideways with each substantial gust.
Tired of fighting the wind, we stopped at a Wilderness Scientific Research Area
that protects “the best surviving remnant of bog pine in the Te Anau Basin” from
development and farming (link).
Bog pine is a native conifer endemic to New Zealand. It’s a hardy, slow-growing
shrub/small tree found in bogs and stony ground from subalpine to montane
areas. Some plants in the Te Anau preserve are 200 years old (link).
The ground was covered with a soft carpet dry sphagnum or bog moss (link).
Rocks and cobbles were exposed where livestock trails and an old two-track road
had disturbed the soil.
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| Wilderness Scientific Research Area in Te Anau Basin (Hunter Mountains in the distance) |
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| Bog pine |
We found a campervan park in Te Anau and walked to the
Fiordland National Park visitor center on Lake Te Anau, the largest lake on the
South Island. [Not the longest, that’s Lake Wakatipu. New Zealander’s have this
thing about superlatives.] The visitor center (link) had lots of brochures and maps about trekking in the park, but very little information
on the park’s environment, conservation or history. A ranger said that most of
its visitors were only interested in trekking. We found it odd that New
Zealand’s largest national park, “…one of the most visited sites in New Zealand” (link),
offered so little information about the park’s natural history.
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| Motorsailer on Lake Te Anau |
At 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres), Fiordland National
Park is the largest national park in New Zealand. It’s part of Te Wāhipounamu,
a natural World Heritage Area that includes Westland, Mt Aspiring and Aoraki/Mt
Cook national parks. Te Wāhipounamu (Māori for "the place of greenstone,"
or jade) stretches 450 km (280 mi) along the west coast, and includes forests,
grasslands, snow-capped mountains, glaciated valleys and coastal fiords. It is
the least altered of New Zealand’s natural ecosystems, mainly because its
rugged topography limits agriculture, forestry and urban development. The
geology, landforms and some of the flora and fauna existed before New Zealand
separated from the super-continent of Gondwanaland. Lying on the boundary of
the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates, Te Wāhipounamu is one of the most
seismically active regions in the world (link, link).
It is the least-populated part of the South Island, but receives over one
million visitors a year (link).
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| North of Te Anau |
It rained throughout our first night in Te Anau. The
following morning we learned that the 120-km (75-mi) road to Milford Sound, the
best known and only sound on the west coast accessible by road (Hwy. 94), was
closed by landslides. The manager of the campervan park said that the road,
known as the Milford Heritage Highway, would open by 11:00 AM and we left for
Milford Sound. The two-lane road follows the Eglinton River up the Eglinton
Valley, which is bounded on the west by the 2,000-m (6,500-ft) peaks of the
Earl Mountains and on the east by low hills. The road became narrower and the
rain and the wind increased the farther north we drove. Skinny, ribbons of white
water cascaded off the surrounding mountains; we counted a dozen waterfalls coming
off one peak. We crossed one of these ribbons of water (Tutoko River) on a narrow bridge;
water roaring down the chasm looked like a vertical flash flood.
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| Eglinton Valley |
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| Tutoko River bridge |
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| Tutoko River |
We crested The Divide, which separated two valleys, and began our descent. The wind increased and the rain, now coming horizontally, lashed the caravan. Streams were overflowing over the road. Twice at the caravan park we were warned about the drive to Milford Sound, but after wheeling the big Mercedes over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) around the South Island, I thought that if tour buses could make the drive to Milford Sound in this weather, so could I.
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| Waterfalls along the road to Milford Sound |
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| Stream along the road to Milford Sound |
Coming down The Divide required almost constant braking; I drove in second or
third gear for 20 km (12 mi) to keep from riding the brakes. Remnants of recent
rock slides and avalanches reached the road; two crews were cleaning up separate
debris flows from the previous night. The last 30 km (19 mi) were the most
interesting. We drove through the Homer Tunnel, a 1.2 km (0.7-mi), one-way
tunnel controlled by traffic lights at either end. Leaving the tunnel, we
negotiated a series of switchbacks down the mountain past no-parking signs
warning of rockfalls. We stopped several time to view the verdant valleys
beneath the clouds. We stopped at a pullout to take a short hike and a kea
approached the campervan looking for a handout. Keas are large parrots found only on the South Island of New Zealand and the world's only alpine parrot (link).
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| Along the road to Milford Sound |
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| Kea habituated to tourists and their vehicles |
Lashed by wind-driven rain, Milford Sound was covered in low
clouds. Average annual rainfall is 6.4 m (21 ft) and it’s not uncommon for 25
cm (10 in) of rain to fall in one hour (link).
On average, it rains more than 200 days and there are less than 60 sunny days a
year (link) .
There were 20 tour buses in the parking lot at the terminal and they were
arriving and departing with regularity. Most of the people coming off the buses
had different expectations for the weather; some wore shorts, flip flops and
light jackets. People disembarking off a tour boat returning from a cruise on the
sound were wearing identical yellow raincoats, which were nothing more than slightly
modified garbage bags.
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| Milford Sound |
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| Tour boats in the harbor in Milford Sound |
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| The Anita Bay in dry dock in Milford Sound |
The next morning we left Te Anau for the short drive south
to Manapouri. We had reservations for the Wednesday cruise to Doubtful Sound in
Fiordland National Park on a boat operated by Real Journeys, which also operated
the TSS Earnslaw in Queenstown. Captain Cook named the fiord Doubtful Harbour
because he doubted that he could get out if he sailed in. We found an older,
quiet campervan park within walking distance of the dock in Pearl Harbour. The
weather was pleasant in Manapouri – clear skies, a few low clouds, warm enough
for tee shirts and shorts.
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| Leaving Pearl Harbour |
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| Lake Manapouri looking east to Te Anau |
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| Lake Manapouri looking west to Fiordland |
The trip to Doubtful Sound was logistically complex,
comprising a 35-km (22-mi) boat ride across Lake Manapouri, a 1-hr bus ride
from the visitor center at the Manapouri Power Station over Wilmot Pass and a
40-km (25-mi) cruise down Doubtful Sound to the Tasman Sea, and then back to
Manapouri over the same route via the same conveyances. The rain began as we
crossed Lake Manapouri and we crested Wilmot Pass in the clouds. Sixty-seven
people boarded the 32-m (105 ft), aluminum-hull Pātea Explorer in Deep Cove for the trip to Tasman Sea (Pātea is
the Māori name for Doubtful Sound). Annual rainfall at Deep Cove is 4-7 m
(13-23 ft) a year. The rain cascades down through forests on the glacier-carved
mountains creating a dark, tannin-stained, freshwater layer on the saltwater in
the fiord. Reduced light penetration allows creatures that usually live in deep
water, like black coral, to survive near the surface, an attraction for scuba
divers. The maximum depth of Doubtful Sound is 421 m (1.381 ft).
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| Stream at Wilmot Pass |
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| Leaving Deep Cove on Doubtful Sound |
About 25 km (15 mi) from Deep Cove, we passed a floating camp
in Blanket Bay built by fishermen who fish for crayfish (rock lobster); their
pots, which are marked by orange buoys, are common along the shoreline. Fiordland
National Park has jurisdiction only down to the high tide line. The fishermen
took advantage of a loophole in the law to build the floating cabin; they get
their freshwater from waterfalls. New Zealand closed the loophole and no more
cabins were built.
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| Floating fish camp in Blanket Bay |
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| Crayfish (lobster) boat in Doubtful Sound (orange buoys mark crayfish pots) |
We passed a pod of bottlenose dolphins, a few of the 60-70 individuals
that live in the outer reaches of Doubtful Sound (link).
Near the entrance to Doubtful Sound, about 35 km (22 mi) from Deep Cove, we sidled
up to a fur seal rookery comprising at least 100 individuals scattered across
several islets and swimming in the surrounding water. Most of New Zealand’s fur
seals occur along this part of the west coast (link).
A large bull chased a smaller bull from the heights of the largest rock down through
the females and into the water. Two fur seals swam out to the boat to check us
out. Over the loud speaker, the captain pointed out several Fiordland crested
penguins low on the rocks.
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| New Zealand fur seals haul out on rocks near the Tasman Sea |
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| New Zealand fur seals |
A sign in the Deep Cove visitor center asks visitors to:
“…think of old, hard, crystalline rocks – formed over millions of years of
twisting, buckling, faulting, heaving – and squeezed upwards by geological
forces to create mountains. Think of the power of Ice Age glaciers, grinding,
crushing, scooping and carving against the rock’s hard resistant character…” Glaciers
carved lakes Manapouri and Te Anau deeper than present-day sea levels; when the
ice melted, the lakes formed behind immense debris piles left by the glaciers.
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| Electronic navigation chart showing our location (black hull) at the entrance to Doubtful Sound |
The wind and rain increased as we approached the Tasman Sea,
and most of the passengers remained in the cabin. The howling wind generated 1-m
(3-ft) white-caps on the long-period swell from the west. Some passengers were
startled as the boat began to pitch and roll; everyone was grabbing at benches,
hand rails and columns. The westerly winds, known as the Roaring Forties (link),
push the seas before it and pick up moisture as they cross the Tasman Sea. The
winds are forced up the mountains of Fiordland and the moisture falls as rain in
the west and snow at higher elevations (link).
It is a forbidding place for men in small boats; there are no settlements along
the coast for 200 km (125 mi) in either direction.
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| Doubtful Sound looking east |
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| Waterfalls in Doubtful Sound |
After experiencing a bit of the Tasman Sea, the captain
turned around and headed back into the sound. From a distance, the gray sky
with low clouds obscuring some peaks, dark green mountains and deep blue water
gave the impression of a black-and-white photograph. It was only up close that
the hidden vibrancy of the multi-hued vegetated cliffs became apparent. The
captain stopped at a dense concentration of water falls in Crooked Arm and nudged
the boat into one of them drenching people on the bow. One of the guides extolled
the quality of the falling water and handed out plastic cups, which people
filled and drank.
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| Waterfall in Crooked Arm |
The return trip was uneventful. The bus carried us back over
Wilmot Pass and dropped us off at the visitor center for the 850-mw Manapouri
Power Station, the largest hydroelectric facility in New Zealand. The power
generators are located in granite rock 200 m (650 ft) below the surface of the lake;
water reaches the generators via a series of pipes from the surface. After passing
through the turbines, the water is discharged at sea level 10 km (6 mi) away in
Deep Cove. In the 1960s, the successful fight over the original design to raise
Lake Manapouri by 30 m (98 ft) and merge it with Lake Te Anau was the beginning
of the modern environmental movement in New Zealand (link, link).
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| Manapouri Power Station |
The rain eased a bit on our return trip and ended by the
time we reached the dock in Pearl Harbour. Some people had used the weather in
Manapouri as a guide for how to dress; others believed the sunny, blue-sky
pictures in the brochures when they booked their cruise (link).
Those that did were cold and wet before we turned around for the return trip.
We brought Gore-Tex jackets, pants and water-proof boots; several layers of
clothes under our rain gear, including wool hats and gloves. The average
rainfall in Doubtful Sound is 10 m (33 ft) a year. Real Journeys should have informed
passengers on what to expect and how to dress. During the trip on Doubtful Sound,
we saw two small tour boats, two groups of kayakers, one fishing boat and one
private yacht. We agreed that it was one of the best day-trips on a tour boat that we’ve
done.
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| Pearl Harbour |
We left Manapouri the next morning and followed the Southern
Scenic Tourist Route (Highway 99) along the Waiau River to Foveaux Strait,
which connects the Tasman Sea to the west with the Pacific Ocean to the east. We
stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the Manapouri Control Structure (dam) on the Waiau River. Until the Manapouri Power Station and control structures
(dams) on lakes Te Anau and Manapouri were built, the Waiau was New Zealand’s second
largest river. The power station diverted flow from the Waiau to Deep Cove on Doubtful Sound and the
control structures raised the level of lakes Manapouri and Te Anau by several
meters. Before the power station was built, the average discharge of the Waiau
River was 400 cubic meters second (14,126 cubic feet per second); after the power project was completed,
the average discharge was 20 cubic meters per second (706 cubic feet per second) (interpretive signs at the
Manapouri Control Structure).
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| Manapouri Control Structure on the Waiau River |
The Southern Scenic Tourist Route was marked by brown, triangular
signs sporting a white, S-shaped road, but the “S” might as well have stood for
sheep. The once-forested, low hills and flood plains had been cleared for sheep
pastures and grain crops as far as we could see. The low-lying Canterbury
Plains were a marked contrast to the high sea cliffs and steep-sided fiords of
the Southland Region we had just left. Thousands of ewes and lambs browsed or
rested on bright green grass. We’d seen lots of sheep farms traveling around
the South Island, but along Highway 99, they were monotonous and boring.
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| Moving sheep to a new pasture |
We turned off the highway to visit a wetland on the Waiau floodplain,
but were blocked by men in a pickup truck and several sheep dogs moving over 100 lambs and ewes from one pasture to another. They drove the
truck behind the sheep while their dogs did most of the work. Some lambs were
separated from their mothers in the confusion of forcing the herd through a
narrow gate. The lambs were bleating, running from female to female trying to
find their mother. The ewes were smelling every lamb they passed trying to find
their lamb. By the time the herd reached the new pasture, most of the lambs had
found their mothers, and the herd slowed and quieted, and began to graze.
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| Men and dogs herding sheep |
We had lunch in Clifden at the longest wooden suspension
bridge (112 m, 366 ft) in NZ. Built in 1899, the bridge is suspended from
bundles of large steel cables anchored in buried rocks on either side. The road
bed of wooden planks was laid on a steel frame. Before the bridge was built,
European settlers crossed the Waiau River by ferry.
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