Horsing Around Te Anau

A couple more pics from Te Anau (this was me trying to shoot behind me with my left hand). When we were in Queenstown we saw an ad for horseback riding, but since we went on the jetboat, we didn't have time to go on a "horse trek" as they call it. So when we checked in to our campsite in Te Anau, Corey noticed a horseback riding pamphlet and so I called them. We were going to go for a late afternoon ride, but when we called they said they'd pick us up in 15 minutes! So we quickly changed, and walked out to wait for the pickup. I wasn't sure what to expect, since most other "rent-a-horses" I've been on have basically been lazy...they were hard to control and would only pick up some enthusiasm on the return leg. The place we went to, Westray Farm provided me with the best horseback riding experience I've ever had. Not only was the horse nice, responsive to my gentle steering with the reigns, but the trek itself was excellent—it wasn't just a out-and-back half-hour walk, this was a long, circular trek up a hill and around a couple of animal herds. We first walked through a herd of curious cows, and on the way back we split a group of sheep. The terrain was also the most challenging I've ever been on horseback—on the way down there were a few steep parts where I felt I really had to lean back in the saddle. The horses were rescued from a former life of racing. Perhaps that was why they were fairly nice: maybe they were grateful for their new life. Mind you, perhaps because they were race horses in their former life, a few of them were a little flighty. I may have been laughing in the pic below because Corey's horse was one of these (she got stuck with the type of horse that I usually get). She eventually switched with the farm owner's horse who then had to discipline the misbehaving horse (had to give it a whack on the neck to stop acting up :)

Road to Te Anau

After our brief stop in Bluff, we went in search of our next campsite. It was supposed to be some sort of Holiday Road campground close to the beach. The online description sounded good, but when we got there, boy was it ever a dump! And of course only one set of toilets was opened, making them unisex. Corey said no way was she going to be showering there and so off we went in search of the other campground in the proximity that offered a "farm experience". The farm experience was night and day difference—very well maintained place, nice toilets, and baby sheep! So Corey made the right call moving us to this place, as it was most pleasant. The lambs were quite friendly, especially when hungry.

Lamb feedings were at 8am and 6pm (sharp!) with the lambs bleeting rather loudly, reminding everyone when it was time. The lambs got milk bottles while the goat and adult sheep got solid food in pellet form. The farmer/campgroundskeeper gave us quite a bit of info about his farm, number of sheep, etc. One new factoid was that sheep are born with a long tail. But as they are rather poor self-cleaners, the tail gets bobbed, either at birth with some kind of hot iron, or like these lambs, they get a rubber band tightened on the tail, which, due to lack of circulation, eventually drops off. I dunno which method is less painful. On the one hand hot-knifing the tail would hurt, but it'd be over quickly. On the other hand the rubber band has to be worn for a while, and I'm sure it can't be very pleasant. Another interesting observation was that sheep have horizontally-slit eyes (unlike cats who have vertically-slit pupils, weird huh?).

After our most pleasant stay on the farm, we got on the road to Te Anau, which would be something of a staging point for our trip to Milford Sound. It's a good idea to do this as the road to Milford is fairly tricky (think old road to Whistler, especially that old 13 or 17 mile stretch that used to be fairly crappy to drive), and there are no gas stations at Milford. On the way to Te Anau we stopped at this outlook to take a look at the Tasman Sea. It was a pretty blustery day. Later in Te Anau the fellow whose horses we rode told us that out here fishermen can only go out 56 days of the year due to these high winds. Btw, as you can deduce, most of the pictures were taken by Corey.  She got mad at me the other day for using her photos that she took with my camera.  I don't know what the big deal was, but truth be told she does take really good photos, and I've neglected to give credit where it's due.  Sorry about that, hopefully I've now corrected this omission.

Bluff

Another shot of the camper. This was at a nice "rest area" or kind of lookout on the scenic route to Invercargill. The lookout was out on a meandering river (at right in the image, beyond the trees, so just slightly obscured). It was a pleasant enough place to have lunch.  The road was not very busy and so the place was pretty quiet.  Except for the occasional lamb bleeting.  As (bad) luck would have it, however, we weren't alone at this picnic site for long...just a few minutes later another campervan full of what sounded like French rolled up.  Of course they came out with their Gauloises, or whatever brand they were smoking...stinking up the place (I used to be one of these stinkers—I'm glad I'm not anymore, especially since we used to smoke inside vehicles, I bet the campervan would have stunk if we had kept that up).

Speaking of the campervan (I got up this Thanksgiving morning, fairly lazily, and my mind drifted back to waking up in the campervan, I guess I kind of miss it a bit :) here is what the interior looked like. I have to admit that its creature comforts were quite good.  Behind the driver's seat was the dining table which doubled as a bed although we never set that one up.  Instead, we ended up sleeping above the cab.  You can't quite see it in the pic, but there was a mattress up there and a ladder that would let us crawl up there.  It was a bit squishy, but manageable.  The back of the van had another bed (in all there were three, as this was a 6-berth van) that we mainly used as a sofa.  We slept there the first night but the fridge noise was a bit too loud.  The fridge is under the stove, to the left of the sink.  The tall white door you see is the toilet/shower.  All of this equipment is very similar to a large sailboat, and most of the onboard systems are the same, e.g., electrical, including panel on which you had to turn the water pump on/off, water, with usable and waste water holding tanks, gas, and diesel.  I can't now remember whether the sailboat we were on was the same but I think so—I'm pretty sure it too had a diesel engine and propane for cooking.  The procedure on both, if I remember correctly, was to keep the water pump off unless you were actually using the water as it tends to drain the house battery and pressurizes the water lines.  Everything else could be on, and had to be on, to provide load when the truck was plugged in (to "shore power" as we'd called it on the boat).  The van also had an inverter somewhere which provided alternating current for regular household appliances (like hairdryers or what have you; for me it was iPhone charger, which served as the morning alarm clock).

Later on that day we reached Invercargill, although we actually circumnavigated it, as it were.  Here we are arriving at the "end of the world", well, at least the paved or road-accessible world.  We are at the top of a pedestrian-accessible lookout just south of Invercargill, at a town called Bluff.  From here we could see the town as well as Stewart Island, which I think is the southernmost piece of land before Antarctica.  Behind us was some kind of industrial harbour where we could see large tankers getting loaded.  There may have been an aluminum smelter or something back there, I don't quite recall what the nature of the industry was.  At the end of the road was this signpost on which you can find distances to other destinations, e.g., London (18,958 km), New York (15,008 km), Sydney (2,000 km), etc.

Tautuku Bay

This picture deserves special mention. On the way to Invercargill from Dunedin we stopped at a lookout point: Florence Hill Lookout, with views of Long Point and Tautuku Beach (Bay).  To me this looked like my "Zihuatanejo", a beach that a character in the movie Shawshank Redemption escaped to.  It was meant as kind of a place for retirement.  And at the end of the peninsula you can see little shacks that look idyllic for finally getting away from it all...it's so remote that, according to the wikipedia entry, the huts are only accessible by all-terrain tractor.  It may be that the weather here is likely to be pretty harsh most of the year, but on that day it looked rather inviting.

Road to Dunedin

Our first destination was on the east coast: Dunedin (pronounced Doo-nee'-dyn), I think the largest of the cities we would visit. The drive from Queenstown took a couple of hours (was it three?) and it took me a while to get used to driving the big rig. Originally we had booked a two-person van, sort of like a small VW bus. They didn't have them so we went up to the next size, a 4-berth van like the one seen here but a bit smaller. When we got there they said we'd been "upgraded" to this 6-berth behemoth. It was roomy on the inside allright, but was a bit of a pig to drive.

Most of the roads were like the one shown here: pasture after pasture after pasture. And of course most dotted with sheep. In some cases cows or even deer (for venison). And all on the left side naturally. The campervan's steering wheel was on the right with the gearshift (automatic) to my left. I think our first choice was to be a stick shift, but I'm actually glad we ended up with an automatic. I've driven left-handed stick before (in Australia), and although I got used to it fairly quickly, the car I had then was much smaller.

Driving the behemoth was particularly perilous on one of the narrowest roads I've ever driven, Highcliff Road, or something like that, on the way to the royal albatross rookery. I don't think we actually have a shot or video of this road, however. I think my passenger was a bit too freaked out to be shooting camera. I think the GPS was to blame for this road selection because it was a bit of a shortcut over top of the cliff instead of skirting around the shore, like we chose to do on the way back. We didn't stay long at the rookery because in effect it was closed to visitors. This is the only place on earth where the albatross nest on land, or populated land at least. I think they also nest on some uninhabited island somewhere, but this is the only place that you can get to and see them in their natural habitat. So we were greatly disappointed to find out that we had happened to have been there in the three week period when they're nesting young and humans are not allowed to set foot there.

In Dunedin I was also hoping to do some shopping (always on the lookout for a nice jacket), but we got there too late and all the shops were closed by the time we managed to get in to town (this was the evening previous to our rookery excursion). We got to the "holiday" campsite (I think they're all called holiday-something-or-other). It was fairly nice, with fairly good facilities but I suppose it took us a little bit longer than usual to get settled in as it was our first one. And it so happened that the powered site we were to take was already occupied when we got there. So a bit of a mixup. We had powered sites at all four of our campsites. This was a smart move booking everything in advance as I think at least two of the sites were close to being fully booked (the last one surely was). All but one had good pump-out facilities, like the one you see here, where I learned how to dump out both of the campervan's holding tanks (grey and black water both).