A Year in New Zealand: Road Trip #2

Got your map ready? Our second road trip trip took us from Duendin to Te Anau, up to Milford Sound, back to Te Anau, down to Invercargill, out to Stewart Island and back, and through the Catlins on our way back to Dunedin.

The drive to Lake Te Anau was uninspiring, although we did pass through Gore, country capitol of New Zealand and a trout fisherman's paradise. The small town of Te Anau lies on the edge of of Lake Te Anau and mostly caters to tourists preparing for the famous Milford walking track or those heading up to Milford Sound. We were in the second group, but our first evening was spent taking a trip to the Glow Worm Caves on the edge of the lake. Apparently this extensive cave system (it takes 3 DAYS to travel through) was known to the Maori but it's location was kept secret from the Pakeha (white foreigners) until some guy finally found it in the 1940s after 4 years of searching.

We took a boat across the lake, watched some short videos about the cave, life if the glow worm, and the rare Takahe bird that lives in the mountains near by. Finally it was time to enter the cave! We followed our guide as he pointed out special features of the cave and then loaded into a small boat that took us into the pitch black grotto that was full of glow worms. It was breath-taking! You are not allowed to take photos inside the cave but you can check it out online at http://www.realjourneys.co.nz/main/glowwormcaves/

Lake Te Anau

Ok, I have to mention our accommodations at Te Anau. We booked 2 nights in a cabin at the Lakeview Holiday Park, which sounded luxurious. However, our "cabin" was a corrugated metal box that measured 10 ft x 10 ft for 3 people and their stuff. The bathrooms and cooking facilities were shared with about 50 other people. Now, I don't need a penthouse suite, but I prefer not to sleep in a claustrophobic and cob-webby shipping container. Oh well, I survived.

Our second day in Te Anau took us to Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park. We decided to take a tour bus up to Milford, the tiny town where the boat departed for our day out on the sound. And it was a good thing that we weren't driving! The Milford Sound road is incredibly scenic but is often crowded with tour buses and camper vans this time of year. With our pokey driving and sight-seeing, we would have pissed off some the more aggressive drivers. The road is also very narrow and windy, especially the closer you get to Milford. Because it was raining (Fiordland gets about 250 INCHES of rain a year), hundreds of waterfalls spontaneously cascaded down the sheer mountains that rose up on either side of the road.

Mirror Lakes, on the way to Milford

The boat trip on Milford Sound was windy and wet but it was amazing! Shear mountains, covered in beech forest and moss, drop off into dark water. More waterfalls thundered into the sound, although the high winds caused many of the falls to cascade diagonally. Unfortunately the photogenic Mitre Peak was shrouded in mist so we couldn't get that famous Milford Sound photo. But I did get a postcard! We ended the day with an absolutely delicious dinner at the Redcliff Cafe in Te Anau. I recommend the pork belly!

Milford Sound

The Disappearing Waterfall

Milford Sound (Mitre Peak in the clouds on left)

On day 3, we awoke to rainbows galore and headed south along the Southern Scenic Route on our way to Invercargill-the launch point for Stewart Island. We stopped for a beautiful walk near the Borland Lodge in Fiordland National Park. The walk took us through mossy beech forest and has become one of my favorite walks to date! We continued on the Scenic Route, passing through rolling green sheep pastures and tiny dot-on-the-map towns. We stopped to investigate the Clifton Caves, but without the advised 2 hours to explore and extra torches (flashlights), we instead promised to go back in the future. In Riverton, we visited some arts and crafts galleries with beautiful wood bowls, wool sweaters and paua jewelry.

Rainbow over Lake Manapouri

Mossy Beech Forest, Borland Nature Walk

We stayed the night in Invercargill and prepared for our 3 days on Stewert Island, a large island that lies roughly 25 miles south of the South Island. We took the 1 hour ferry from the town of Bluff, apparently the oldest town in New Zealand. It was a bumpy ride across Foveaux Strait, which is often said to be one of the roughest crossings in the world as it lies directly in the roaring 40s. We landed in Oban, the tiny (and only) town on the Island and were quickly whisked away in a van to our Bed and Breakfast in order to avoid the soaking rain that the dark sky began to pour upon us at that moment. It was a sign of things to come!

Stewart Island has a long Maori and European history. Today, most of the island is National Park, filled with bizarre birds and dense, lush rain forest made possible by the incredibly frequent and intense rains. It is said that on Stewart Island you can experience all 4 season in 1 hour. And we certainly did!

We took the first day to explore Halfmoon Bay around Oban and discovered beautiful golden beaches and emerald green waters. Stewart Island certainly is beautiful! The second day we took a quick boat ride out to Ulva Island, a forested island managed by the Department of Conservation as an Open Island Sanctuary. It is one of few predator-free sanctuaries for native birds and plants in New Zealand. We spent about 5 hours meandering our way through the forest, looking for birds that we would not see elsewhere in New Zealand. We managed to see the rare Saddlebacks, Robins, Kakas, Rifleman, Parakeets, Wood Pigeons, Weka, Tui, Bellbirds, and even the elusive Kiwi!

The Kiwi spotting was incredible, we never expected to see one of these flightless, nocturnal birds in the wild! We watched her poke around the leaf litter, unaware of our presence, sniffing out worms with her long thin beak until she lumbered off into the dark forest. Kiwi feathers look more like long brown hair and they have big, muscular legs. What a strange bird!

Around Halfmoon Bay, Stewart Island

Dead Man's Beach, Stewart Island

The elusive Kiwi, Ulva Island

We left Stewart Island early on a freezing cold morning, collected our car in Bluff, and drove east to Curio Bay in the Catlins. The Catlins, situated along the Southern Scenic Route, contain breathtaking scenery that actually reminds me of northern California. The cliffs are buffeted by crashing swells and roaring winds from Antarctica and the ancient podocarp forests march into the sea. We stayed in an amazing place on the beach in Curio Bay that actually had a heated floor in the bathroom! We spent the evening at a beach with a Jurassic-age petrified forest and watched the rare yellow-eyed penguins come ashore for the evening after a day fishing at sea.

Our last day on the road was spent exploring sites in the Catlins in the pouring rain. We visited the spectacular Cathedral Caves at low tide, explored beech forest, checked out a reed-filled estuary, and even managed to find our car surrounded on the road by a flock of sheep moving paddocks! I couldn't resist taking pictures, of course.