After tens of hours in rental cars, thousands of kilometers on beautiful roads, and countless nights of not being able to feel my toes, we finally reached Queenstown. In this city you can do any extreme sport you can think of: skydive, paraglide, snowboard, or the all famous Bungy Jump. We did none of these upon landing in this amazing city...instead we got in the car and drove for almost 5 hours all the way out to Milford Sound and Mitre Point, the Number 1 thing all Kiwis must do. Mitre Point is a mountain out in the middle of Milford Sound and it is nearly always covered by clouds or rain. If you get to see it on a sunny day then you are quite lucky because it rains 6,700 mm a year here.
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| Mitre Point...covered in clouds as always. |
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| I know I look special... but in my defense, it is about 40 degrees, windy as could be, raining, and I think I may be wearing 4 shirts... |
The road to Mitre Point may well be one of the coolest we ever took. It is 110 Kilometers from the nearest town one way which means you better fill up your tank before you even think of making the drive. In order to get there you must drive through the Rainforests of Fiordland National Park and then into the dark depths of Homer Tunnel. The tunnel is straight through a mountain. It was opened in 1954 and for quite a while it was the largest tunnel in the world. It is just over 1.25 km long and it doesn't have smooth walls like the tunnels we are used to in the States...you are driving straight through the rugged rock of the mountain.
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| I didn't take this picture...you aren't allowed to stop your car near the tunnel during any season except summer because there is a significant risk of avalanche...but this is the eastern portal of the Homer Tunnel. |
We stayed in a pretty camp site that night and then visited Humboldt Falls the next day.
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| camp |
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| Sometimes I wish that we could get closer to the amazing sites |
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| The clouds cleared enough to see the top for less than five minutes! |
Just about as soon as we left the Falls it started to rain...and it didn't stop until about 8 pm...We spent a long day in the tent while we played cards. We also got attacked by thousands of Blackflies which are kind enough to bite.
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| Blackflies that were on our porch...they didn't get into the tent but they did make it really hard to leave. |
We spent our last full day in Queenstown where both of my travel buddies Bungy jumped. I didn't do it for a number of reasons, but I think the most valid is the fact that I like to blackout when I am upside down for more than a second or two...which would not be good if I were to hang that way for a couple of minutes. We visited another gold mining settlement too: Arrowtown. We spent our last night of camping in New Zealand at Lake Moke...my official favorite campground.
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| I decided I would live in this mountain later in life. |
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| Words cannot express how cool it was to see the mountains perfectly reflected in the lake. It was a perfect end to my travels in New Zealand. |
And finally a picture or two from the plane ride home:
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| The color of the water here is unreal. |
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| A taste of the Southern Alps |
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