Emily's Adventures in New Zealand: Adventures Part 1A: On the road with Jake and Robin

So Robin, Jake, and I were supposed to do a joint post while they were over here, but we were tired from traveling and ended up watching Dr. Who episodes in my room instead. Anyway, here goes.

Basically, they arrived and hung out in Wellington for a few days as we waited for my last exam to be over. (Wellington, by the way, experienced several days of solidly bad weather (wind, driving rain, hail) starting from their arrival.) However, we had a nice enough time, and saw the big museum and went up the hill overlooking the city and that kind of thing.

As soon as my last exam had ended, we headed for the ferry and started off for the South Island. It's about a three hour ferry ride across the Cook Strait, and the last bit of the crossing winds through some gorgeous sounds (flooded valleys). We took the train down the coast from Picton to Christchurch on the east coast, then took the other (rather more scenic) train through the Southern Alps to Greymouth on the west coast. From there we rented a car and drove south via several national parks. Eventually, we headed east again to Dunedin and then drove back up the east coast to Picton and the ferry.

There were very few cars on the roads, which was good because virtually all the highways are 2-lane roads, and most of them wind around coasts and mountains and pass over 1-lane bridges quite regularly.

The scenery was amazing. I knew it was going to be pretty down there, but it was really ridiculously gorgeous everywhere we went, and the drives from place to place were generally just as nice as the destinations. In fact it was rather anguishing that daylight only lasted about 10 hours. We had to do some driving in the dark, knowing full well that there were mountains and lakes and valleys on all sides. The west coast and south-west of the island are most dramatic, but the whole things is pretty in different ways. Anyway, along the way we hiked, went sky-diving, hiked on a glacier, cruised through a fiord, rode a jet-boat through a canyon, and saw various wildlife.

The sky-diving I enjoyed mostly for the scenery. I cannot imagine a more beautiful place to do it. The actual falling was not as exciting as I expected, but the gliding over the mountains was very nice.

Wildlife spotted included dolphins, seals, various notable birds (New Zealand, having no native land mammals, has many interesting flightless and flighted birds), and, thank goodness, penguins. We had to cheat a little bit for the penguins. We went to a penguin colony near Dunedin that people are working to conserve. They've dug trenches in the beach so that you can hide in them and watch the penguins going out or coming in from their day's hunting. It was rather a surreal experience running through the trenches chasing our weathered penguin-guide woman to the next likely spot. Anyway, the penguins were appropriately cute and amusing.

I also enjoyed seeing black swans, and there was the call of one bird that may haunt me for the rest of my life. I think it was a bird, anyway. It sounded like gentle bells jingling in many tones. Frankly, it sounded magical. (Jake and Robin are not quite as enamored of the memory as I am, though they were pretty darn impressed at the time, no matter what they tell you.)

And on that note, I will end this for today. Look out for Part 1B: The North Island or Emily, Jake, and Robin Drive into a Blizzard and Part 2: Oz.

Below is a sampling of Jake's and my photos.