Well we did get to see Albatrosses, though you couldn’t say we got up-close and personal. As yet another endangered species, they are kept under strict control, or should I say the tourists are. The Albatrosses are incubating their eggs at this time of year and there really isn’t too much activity. You are behind glass and quite a distance away (can you see an Albatross?).

In the late 1800’s the New Zealander’s were afraid of a Russian invasion and so they had the famous ‘disappearing gun’ manufactured and installed on Taiaroa Head. It’s an amazing contraption that used a hydraulic fluid of soapy water to raise and lower the beast in very short order.
It was never used in anger but was fired over 400 times.

In the afternoon we took a trip to Allans Beach on the way back to Dunedin. It’s a beautiful beach were yours truly took another chilly swim.

But the best part was our seal encounter.

And then we got the following display by some birds fishing in the surf.

After some much needed stores replenishment in Dunedin we headed up the coast through Palmerston, aiming for a campsite shown on our map at a place called Shag Point. The campsite turned out to be fictitious so we parked right next to the beach in a rest area and went to sleep to the sound of surf and passing trucks and the occasional train.

The next day sent us in search of penguins at a place called Oamaru where they have both blue and yellow eyed penguins. Our timing was bad as most of the day is spent at sea for the penguins and their chicks are hidden up on the high cliffs in holes and the brush. Can you spot the chick in this picture?

It was just as hard to see in real life.

After Oamaru we turned back inland again from the coast in the direction of Mount Cook. On the way we stopped at an unmanned campsite on Lake Benmore at Sailor’s Cut. This place was a sea of permanent tents and caravans, the most crowded place we’ve seen. You can buy a season pass for 300 bucks so you can see the appeal.

From there we continued our northerly route through Omarama and Twizel (pronounced twyzel) to stay on Lake Pukaki at the campervan site closest to Mount Cook after we’d done a preliminary trip to the Tasman Glacier. The glaciers here are very different to Fox and Franz Josef. For a start you approach the whole Mount Cook experience down a wide flat valley with little or none of the tortuous stuff of the Western side of the Southern Alps. The glaciers also end in lakes with protruding ice. The ice is not floating and the colour of the water is just as it appears.

We got to see three glaciers here, the Tasman (the biggest in New Zealand)

the Hooker

and the Mueller.

We later found out that we were at Mount Cook exactly on the day of Sir Edmund Hillary’s death. This is the centre that bears his name which looks out over the mountain.We met two other couples on the Glentanner campsite, Bert and Elizabeth from Thunder Bay Ontario who are a spry pair in their eighties and Brian and Rosie from Nelson in the South Island. We have Brian and Rosie’s address in Nelson and an invite to drop by on our way through. The four of them met some years ago and get together whenever they can.

We did a long walk on the Friday and ended up a little sunburned and tired. However, move on we must, as we plan to be in Christchurch on Sunday night, so here we are right now Saturday 12^th January in the Lake Tekapo Holiday Park after driving back down beside Lake Pukaki and round the bottom end where the most magnificent views of Mount Cook are to be seen.

The colour of the water is not a photographic aberration; the lake is fed by glacial water containing minerals gouged from the rock by the glacier itself, giving the water this beautiful colour.

Lake Tekapo is a small town on the lake of the same name with an observatory which we took a look at. The Mount John Observatory is New Zealand’s most southerly observatory and the world’s most southern optical observatory. There are actually multiple telescopes on the mountain

and on our tour one of the other participants had actually protested the building and use of a US telescope to monitor Russian satellites during the cold war. We were shown the largest telescope which is actually owned by the Japanese (note the colours) and is used for a project called MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics). We got a short lesson in astro-physics from our guide which made perfect sense at the time. Although it is a true optical telescope you really don’t look through it, it has a helium cooled digital camera at the business end with a LOT of megapixels and they scan the night sky taking photographs of stars which are then processed by supercomputers looking for planets in other solar systems. The following link tells all: www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/moa/moa_telescope.html

Next place on the list was Peel Forest where there is a (noisy – lots of youngsters) full service campsite which we arrived after driving through Fairlie and Geraldine.

We met Malcolm and Dawn Pearson from Lyttleton near Christchurch on the campsite. Malcolm it turns out had spent his working life in the merchant marine after going to sea as a young boy on one of the last square-rigged vessels to be used for cargo transport. The ship was the Pamir, taken from the Fins in WWII and used by New Zealand. Here’s a pic.

You can find more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamir_(ship)

Next morning (Sunday Jan 14^th) we took what we thought would be a three hour hike that turned into the most arduous trek we have done yet – hands and knees stuff. However, it we saw some interesting vegetation like this fern/tree. Is it a tree or a fern?

The forest is also home to some 1000 year-old Totara trees, this not being the biggest (that one is 3 metres in diameter).

After the walk we headed on to Christchurch to call in on John and Jane Forrest and family where the Internet is plentiful and free (to us). Oh yes, and the food and wine are also plentiful.

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