Day 43 – Jan. 14 – Te Anau/Milford Sound
We’re headed for the poster child for NZ, the lovely Milford Sound, in the southwestern corner of NZ, fjordland country. Had to get up early, dang it, at 6 am, to make sure we made the 10:30 boat. The road up there from Te Anau was another one of those that makes you want to stop at every curve, the views are so spectacular. The road to get there is over huge mountains, and they started building it with wheelbarrows and shovels in about 1929. It took them about 15 years to build it. At one point they ran into a huge headwall that was impossible to get over even on foot, being a vertical cliff about 1,000 feet high. No way could a road be built over it, so they dug a tunnel through it.
Turns out it only took us an hour to get there, instead of the two we were warned it would take, so we got there at least an hour and a half early. We were almost the only ones on the road, so it was a leisurely drive, full of stops for photos. Can’t believe how many photos I’ve taken on this trip. Thank heavens for digital!! And the Delete button.
Ever since I lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I’d thought there was no place on earth more beautiful than that. The view that greets you when you crest Togwotee Pass and see the entire Teton Valley laid out before you - with the majestic Tetons rising dramatically from the valley floor - is one of the most stunning I’d ever seen.
When I came up over a rise and saw the Eglinton Valley spread out before us, with its braided rivers flowing through green valleys, and the huge mountain range on all sides, I finally admitted that there is at least one other place on earth that rivals the Tetons. But the difference between the two is that there wasn’t a single sign of civilization in this valley except for some fence posts. No houses, no barns, no telephone poles, no hay stacks. Jackson used to look almost this pristine before the 1970’s, but now most of the valley has been bought up by developers and houses planted. It’s so sad to see now. But this valley probably won’t ever meet that fate, as the government keeps a tight rein on that in this country, and they’ve made it into a national park.
When we pulled into the parking lot, there was only one other car, probably owned by some other tourist with bad info. Pretty soon, however, cars began arriving in droves, then came the buses. They came… and came… and came. People poured off of them and soon filled the building where we all waited for our particular boat. There were about a dozen big boats lined up to take hundreds of people all for a cruise on the same sound at the same time. Overhead were planes skimming more tourists over the mountaintops, down to a few hundred feet above the water. Helicopters buzzed around like giant dragonflies.
Donning my Sea-bands in case the seas got rough, I climbed aboard and headed right to the top deck where we could see unobstructed in all directions, then the boat backed out of the harbor. Our narrator told us that this was one of only 5 nice days he’d seen all summer. Our travel karma is still working. We had clear skies and calm seas, at least in the Sound. We are planning to sail out into the Tasman Sea, though, and it can be rough.
In Milford Sound the cliffs plunge vertically into the deep waters. And waterfalls seem to begin in the sky and fall like lace hundreds of feet below, ending up mostly as mist by the time they reach the water of the Sound. When the wind blows, as it did in several places on the Sound, the waterfall nearly disappears sideways into the air.
A half-hour into the cruise the ship entered the wind tunnel created by the narrow entrance of the Sound. They’ve clocked the winds there at 120 mph, but today they were only about 60 mph. Enough to send us to the back of the boat out of the wind, though. There we met a couple from Dortmund, Germany, and spent some time boning up on our Deutsch and exchanging e-mail addresses. Also met a lady from Idaho who is a river guide on the Salmon River, which I floated in 1983. It’s frozen now so she and hubby got out of Dodge until the snow melts and tourists want to brave the freezing water in early spring.
Then we were in the open Tasman Sea, in rolling swells. I whipped out my Sea-Bands and wrapped them around my wrists to keep the contents of my stomach in place. Worked.
Two of the thirty-something tectonic plates meet here in NZ, and one is subducting under the other. The result is that there is a lot of mountain-building going on here, a lot of earthquakes and hot magma pouring out of the ground from way deep inside the earth and spilling out onto the ground in places. One of the visible signs of all this activity is a lot of faults, wide cracks in the earth where rocks pull away from each other. In Milford Sound there is a big fault that goes right through it. My geology blood got going when I saw this. Joe just yawned.
Rather than go on and on about how gorgeous this part of NZ is, I will just tell you that this is probably the Number 1 tourist attraction in the country, and the reason is its incomparable beauty. You’ll have to see the pictures to understand.
We’ve made some observations about these Kiwis, because we notice that they ALL have big smiles on their faces and seem so perpetually happy. Here’s what we’ve come up with to explain this phenomenon:
There aren’t so many of them that they overrun the country. There are only twice the number in the whole country as are in the city we live in.
There is plenty of food, especially lamb and beef, because there are billions of each of these animals. There is also a lot of pork, but we haven’t seen a single pig, so we don’t know where they hide them.
They keep people from immigrating here with extremely high requirements they have to meet. You have to be young, healthy, and able to work in a type of job NZ needs – like teaching and nursing and computer stuff.
There is no unemployment, because they don’t let in any deadbeats.
Nobody is trying to kill them or bomb them. What would a terrorist do with this country?
There is no military, because they don’t have to defend themselves. An aside: they don’t allow any nuclear-powered ships to enter any of their ports. When they told that to the US, the US said, "Fine, then if anybody attacks you, you’re on your own. Don’t call us." And NZ just told the US to go fly a kite.
Everybody seems to have enough of the important things in life: food, shelter, and clothing. They don’t seem to want much more. They’re not trying to outdo one another in looks, fashion, hair styles, cars, toys, or anything else that basically makes up 95% of the commercials we see on US tv. What they mostly seem to want is to get out onto the hiking trails, grab the next wave with their surfboards, hit the road on their bicycles, and hang out with their friends. Nice. The ones who do want all the toys go to Australia, get high-paying, stressful jobs, and call NZ ‘backward’.
Most of the houses are old because they aren’t building new ones that we can see. There are at least 2 obvious possible reasons for this: the economy is so depressed that nobody can afford to build one; and the population is so stable that they don’t need to build any new ones. When somebody dies, somebody young buys their house, so they just keep turning over the existing ones..
Day 44 – Jan. 15 – Te Anau to Bluff
Having seen the movie "The World’s Fastest Indian" with Anthony Hopkins when we first got here, we HAVE to go to Invercargill, where Burt lived and built his Indian motorcycle. He went on to set a world speed record with his souped-up bunch of bolts. According to the guidebook, which doesn’t even mention Burt, there isn’t any reason to go there that appeals to us.
On the way there, we stopped off in some farmer’s field to see some caves that the Maoris used to hang out in before the Europeans chased them away. There was one other car stopped on the side of the road to see this, so they must have the same guidebook we do. It certainly isn’t a place where the tour buses stop.
The other car belonged to a couple of ladies in their 50, traveling together, from the States. They’ve lived on a boat together for years, but one of them is now land-based. They have lived in Seattle and now live in Ft. Lauderdale when they’re not meeting each other in exotic places like here. Linda and Dee. We yakked in the middle of the road (about 2 cars came by the whole time; this is really out in the sticks) for about an hour before we parted ways. After a cursory look into the cave, we headed down the road for Invercargill.
E. Hayes and Sons’ hardware store sits on the main street that runs through the middle of town. They sell all the things any hardware store sells, but in the back of the store they have a little diplay of 2 of Burt’s motorcycles, plus a glass cabinet with a couple of shelves in it. On the shelves are displays of Burt’s certificates he got for setting his speed records, a copy of a book about him that you can buy, some postcards and t-shirts you can buy, and a picture of him.
As we were wandering around the store, in walked the Salmon River guide and her hubby! Just keep running into the same people who are on the same schedule as we are. After taking pictures of Burt’s motorcycle from every angle possible, we’d seen all of Invercargill we wanted to. Off we went south to the tiny town of Bluff, at the tip end of the peninsula outside of I’gill. We got the last room in the inn that is perched at the tip end of the peninsula, with a view out to sea that in the US you’d pay 5 times what we paid for it. They also served dinner there, so we told them we’d like to eat there. After we sat down to eat, a couple came in for dinner and were turned away. We guessed they could only handle so many people. There were only about 4 other people in the dining room, so I guess they have a small kitchen or tiny staff or something. They served us a fabulous meal – blue cod for me, succulent, tender, and cooked to perfection; and cold smoked chicken breast for Joe, along with 2 huge platters of veggies – one of turnips and carrots, the other of scalloped potatoes.
As we were eating, we noticed 2 ladies walking away from the inn, as if they’d also been turned away. I looked closer and realized it was Linda and Dee! Joe ran out and hailed them, bringing them back into the inn. The proprietor was perplexed, as here were the 2 ladies sitting at our table whom he’d just turned away. We implored him to feed them, and he relented. So they got some great blue cod, too, and we all had a great visit for another couple of hours, with them regaling us with stories of life on the high seas, until the entire dining room was empty and the staff was hinting for us to leave by noisily setting the tables for the next day’s breakfast.
Because there were still a couple of more hours of daylight left, we decided to take a walk along the peninsula, so off we went down a path that eventually led through the woods up to the top of a bluff, and back to the inn. Finally, with dark descending, we said our good-byes, they climbed into their extremely dusty, dishevelled camper, and puttered off, after hugs and e-mail addresses being exchanged. We’re glad we had business cards made up a while back. They’re coming in handy on this trip. They always elicit a chuckle out of the receiver, as they say ‘Carr-Weiss Institute for Shallow Thinking’.
Day 45 – Jan. 16 – Bluff to Milton
As this place provides breakfast, Joe had the ‘cooked breakfast’ and I had the ‘continental’. Their cooked breakfast always has 2 or 3 fried eggs with the orangest yolks in the world. I think that’s because the chickens are almost all free-range. They don’t cage them up in tiny cages like we do, but they scratch around on the ground for bugs and stuff, like real chickens. He also got 3 pieces of fried ham, 1 huge sausage, 2 pieces of toast with real butter and jam, a huge portion of hash browns, and a slice of orange.
I got cold cereal, yogurt, and several kinds of bread from which to make toast. They gave us orange, tomato and some other kind of juice that was dark green. I thought maybe spinach, or Swiss chard, or broccoli juice, but gave up and asked the innkeeper. ‘Grass’, he said. I just looked at him with a blank face. ‘Grass.’ ‘Sure, rabbits eat grass, why not people?’ he said. I poured myself a sip and tasted it. It was kiwi fruit juice, and was so yummy I had 2 glasses of it. Joe passed. He doesn’t eat or drink green things.
While we ate, we watched the ferry ply the rough waters from Bluff out to Stewart Island, the island a couple of hours south of NZ. Linda and Dee are on the ferry, and I’m glad we’re not. The seas are very rough and we can see the waves splashing over the deck as the ferry smashes into each wave head-on. Glad they have strong stomachs. Hope the rest of the people on the ferry do, too. They’ll need ‘em.
Remember the Indian brothers who got smashed by the glacier? Turns out one of them had the keys to the family’s rental car in his pocket. And the rental car company isn’t the usual smiley NZ-er that we keep running into. He’s going to make them pay for every day they keep the car. They can tow the car back to the rental agency if they want, but they’re having to pay until the car is physically back to them. So the jury is still out on how that story will play out.
The Burt Munro brochure said that Burt had done all his work on his motorcycle in a shed at a certain address. So to complete our Burt Munro odyssey, we headed out to see his shed. Turns out there is a house there and no sign of a shed, a yappy dog in the yard and no sign of any sort saying anything about Burt. We left disappointed, especially because we had to actually go back into Invercargill to see it, or not see it.
I need a haircut. It’s been 6 weeks since my last one, and I’m beginning to look like a sheepdog. So we went to downtown Invercargill to find a beauty salon. In the first one I stepped into, they were able to take me right away. That should have been my first clue. I’m used to having to schedule my appointment with my hairdresser 6 weeks in advance, so to be able to sit right down was unbelievable. Well, so is my haircut. Unbelievably bad!! She gave me a crewcut! I feel and look bald. There will be no more pictures taken on this trip that include me in them. I’ll always remember Invercargill as the ‘Town of the Bad Haircut’.
Now I know why Burt Munro was trying to build the world’s fastest motorcycle: so he could get out of that town as fast as he could!
And that’s just what we did after I put a bag over my head and got in the car. Headed for the coast, where we heard there were some porpoises. Called Hector’s porpoises, there is a family or pod of about 20 of them in a beautiful cove about a half-mile across. After sitting on the bluff above it for a few minutes, we saw a couple of them surface, blow, and go back under. What a thrill! The entire time we sat there, they put on a display for us, rolling and playing, while we pointed and yelped.
When we stopped to watch the porpoises, there was a single sea gull standing all alone, watching us as if he expected to get a tidbit to eat. I keep old bread just for such occasions in the trunk. So I got it out, and tossed him a few small pieces. He was delighted! Soon 4 of his friends came to join him for dinner. He transformed immediately into a jealous guardian of his territory. He lowered his head and opened his mouth and let out a raucous scream and ran at one of the other gulls. When that gull moved off, he ran at another one. Soon there was an entire flock of them and he spent the whole 15 minutes we were there defending his territory in this manner. Only occasionally did he get any of the bread. He was the only one acting like he owned the place, so I’m presuming he has staked out this special place and has made it clear that nobody else is welcome. He’d have gotten a lot more bread if he’d been willing to share, because I tossed a lot his way, but he always ran after the other birds who went for the bread instead of running after the bread. There’s probably a life lesson here.
On another deserted beach where we stopped to see a lighthouse, we saw a sea lion wandering up the beach towards us. We went closer, but stayed above the sand, hidden in the sand dunes, and he came to within about 60 feet of us. While we clicked away with our cameras, he rolled in the sand, tossing it about with his flippers and coating himself with it. Then he’d rear up on his flippers that looked like an evolutionary mistake as he wobbled around on them. He heaved his ponderous body right and left as he propelled himself with appendages that didn’t look as if they were designed for anything but swimming.
As we rounded a curve on one of the winding roads through the sheep country, we were greeted with about 40 lambs standing in the road all looking at us. They’d gotten out of the pasture and were taking the path of least resistance. On both sides of the road were tall weeds and they didn’t want to wade through them. But as we inched towards them, they all ran off into the weeds anyway, letting us pass, but not before leaving clear evidence of their having spent a lot of time standing in the road, if you know what I mean.
After a day of mostly sitting on beaches, we got tired of sight-seeing and headed for the barn. The only town that looked big enough on the map to have a motel was Milton. As we went through one town, the cops were stopping every car, then releasing them We found out there was a jack-knifed stock truck blocking the entire road north of town, where we were headed, so we had to detour about 10 miles out of our way. We finally reached the nothing town of Milton, got a motel room in a brand-new motel with the best internet service we’ve had yet, went to bed and spent the night listening to the rain pound on the roof. Doesn’t bode well for tomorrow.
We’re headed for the poster child for NZ, the lovely Milford Sound, in the southwestern corner of NZ, fjordland country. Had to get up early, dang it, at 6 am, to make sure we made the 10:30 boat. The road up there from Te Anau was another one of those that makes you want to stop at every curve, the views are so spectacular. The road to get there is over huge mountains, and they started building it with wheelbarrows and shovels in about 1929. It took them about 15 years to build it. At one point they ran into a huge headwall that was impossible to get over even on foot, being a vertical cliff about 1,000 feet high. No way could a road be built over it, so they dug a tunnel through it.
Turns out it only took us an hour to get there, instead of the two we were warned it would take, so we got there at least an hour and a half early. We were almost the only ones on the road, so it was a leisurely drive, full of stops for photos. Can’t believe how many photos I’ve taken on this trip. Thank heavens for digital!! And the Delete button.
Ever since I lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I’d thought there was no place on earth more beautiful than that. The view that greets you when you crest Togwotee Pass and see the entire Teton Valley laid out before you - with the majestic Tetons rising dramatically from the valley floor - is one of the most stunning I’d ever seen.
When I came up over a rise and saw the Eglinton Valley spread out before us, with its braided rivers flowing through green valleys, and the huge mountain range on all sides, I finally admitted that there is at least one other place on earth that rivals the Tetons. But the difference between the two is that there wasn’t a single sign of civilization in this valley except for some fence posts. No houses, no barns, no telephone poles, no hay stacks. Jackson used to look almost this pristine before the 1970’s, but now most of the valley has been bought up by developers and houses planted. It’s so sad to see now. But this valley probably won’t ever meet that fate, as the government keeps a tight rein on that in this country, and they’ve made it into a national park.
When we pulled into the parking lot, there was only one other car, probably owned by some other tourist with bad info. Pretty soon, however, cars began arriving in droves, then came the buses. They came… and came… and came. People poured off of them and soon filled the building where we all waited for our particular boat. There were about a dozen big boats lined up to take hundreds of people all for a cruise on the same sound at the same time. Overhead were planes skimming more tourists over the mountaintops, down to a few hundred feet above the water. Helicopters buzzed around like giant dragonflies.
Donning my Sea-bands in case the seas got rough, I climbed aboard and headed right to the top deck where we could see unobstructed in all directions, then the boat backed out of the harbor. Our narrator told us that this was one of only 5 nice days he’d seen all summer. Our travel karma is still working. We had clear skies and calm seas, at least in the Sound. We are planning to sail out into the Tasman Sea, though, and it can be rough.
In Milford Sound the cliffs plunge vertically into the deep waters. And waterfalls seem to begin in the sky and fall like lace hundreds of feet below, ending up mostly as mist by the time they reach the water of the Sound. When the wind blows, as it did in several places on the Sound, the waterfall nearly disappears sideways into the air.
A half-hour into the cruise the ship entered the wind tunnel created by the narrow entrance of the Sound. They’ve clocked the winds there at 120 mph, but today they were only about 60 mph. Enough to send us to the back of the boat out of the wind, though. There we met a couple from Dortmund, Germany, and spent some time boning up on our Deutsch and exchanging e-mail addresses. Also met a lady from Idaho who is a river guide on the Salmon River, which I floated in 1983. It’s frozen now so she and hubby got out of Dodge until the snow melts and tourists want to brave the freezing water in early spring.
Then we were in the open Tasman Sea, in rolling swells. I whipped out my Sea-Bands and wrapped them around my wrists to keep the contents of my stomach in place. Worked.
Two of the thirty-something tectonic plates meet here in NZ, and one is subducting under the other. The result is that there is a lot of mountain-building going on here, a lot of earthquakes and hot magma pouring out of the ground from way deep inside the earth and spilling out onto the ground in places. One of the visible signs of all this activity is a lot of faults, wide cracks in the earth where rocks pull away from each other. In Milford Sound there is a big fault that goes right through it. My geology blood got going when I saw this. Joe just yawned.
Rather than go on and on about how gorgeous this part of NZ is, I will just tell you that this is probably the Number 1 tourist attraction in the country, and the reason is its incomparable beauty. You’ll have to see the pictures to understand.
We’ve made some observations about these Kiwis, because we notice that they ALL have big smiles on their faces and seem so perpetually happy. Here’s what we’ve come up with to explain this phenomenon:
There aren’t so many of them that they overrun the country. There are only twice the number in the whole country as are in the city we live in.
There is plenty of food, especially lamb and beef, because there are billions of each of these animals. There is also a lot of pork, but we haven’t seen a single pig, so we don’t know where they hide them.
They keep people from immigrating here with extremely high requirements they have to meet. You have to be young, healthy, and able to work in a type of job NZ needs – like teaching and nursing and computer stuff.
There is no unemployment, because they don’t let in any deadbeats.
Nobody is trying to kill them or bomb them. What would a terrorist do with this country?
There is no military, because they don’t have to defend themselves. An aside: they don’t allow any nuclear-powered ships to enter any of their ports. When they told that to the US, the US said, "Fine, then if anybody attacks you, you’re on your own. Don’t call us." And NZ just told the US to go fly a kite.
Everybody seems to have enough of the important things in life: food, shelter, and clothing. They don’t seem to want much more. They’re not trying to outdo one another in looks, fashion, hair styles, cars, toys, or anything else that basically makes up 95% of the commercials we see on US tv. What they mostly seem to want is to get out onto the hiking trails, grab the next wave with their surfboards, hit the road on their bicycles, and hang out with their friends. Nice. The ones who do want all the toys go to Australia, get high-paying, stressful jobs, and call NZ ‘backward’.
Most of the houses are old because they aren’t building new ones that we can see. There are at least 2 obvious possible reasons for this: the economy is so depressed that nobody can afford to build one; and the population is so stable that they don’t need to build any new ones. When somebody dies, somebody young buys their house, so they just keep turning over the existing ones..
Day 44 – Jan. 15 – Te Anau to Bluff
Having seen the movie "The World’s Fastest Indian" with Anthony Hopkins when we first got here, we HAVE to go to Invercargill, where Burt lived and built his Indian motorcycle. He went on to set a world speed record with his souped-up bunch of bolts. According to the guidebook, which doesn’t even mention Burt, there isn’t any reason to go there that appeals to us.
On the way there, we stopped off in some farmer’s field to see some caves that the Maoris used to hang out in before the Europeans chased them away. There was one other car stopped on the side of the road to see this, so they must have the same guidebook we do. It certainly isn’t a place where the tour buses stop.
The other car belonged to a couple of ladies in their 50, traveling together, from the States. They’ve lived on a boat together for years, but one of them is now land-based. They have lived in Seattle and now live in Ft. Lauderdale when they’re not meeting each other in exotic places like here. Linda and Dee. We yakked in the middle of the road (about 2 cars came by the whole time; this is really out in the sticks) for about an hour before we parted ways. After a cursory look into the cave, we headed down the road for Invercargill.
E. Hayes and Sons’ hardware store sits on the main street that runs through the middle of town. They sell all the things any hardware store sells, but in the back of the store they have a little diplay of 2 of Burt’s motorcycles, plus a glass cabinet with a couple of shelves in it. On the shelves are displays of Burt’s certificates he got for setting his speed records, a copy of a book about him that you can buy, some postcards and t-shirts you can buy, and a picture of him.
As we were wandering around the store, in walked the Salmon River guide and her hubby! Just keep running into the same people who are on the same schedule as we are. After taking pictures of Burt’s motorcycle from every angle possible, we’d seen all of Invercargill we wanted to. Off we went south to the tiny town of Bluff, at the tip end of the peninsula outside of I’gill. We got the last room in the inn that is perched at the tip end of the peninsula, with a view out to sea that in the US you’d pay 5 times what we paid for it. They also served dinner there, so we told them we’d like to eat there. After we sat down to eat, a couple came in for dinner and were turned away. We guessed they could only handle so many people. There were only about 4 other people in the dining room, so I guess they have a small kitchen or tiny staff or something. They served us a fabulous meal – blue cod for me, succulent, tender, and cooked to perfection; and cold smoked chicken breast for Joe, along with 2 huge platters of veggies – one of turnips and carrots, the other of scalloped potatoes.
As we were eating, we noticed 2 ladies walking away from the inn, as if they’d also been turned away. I looked closer and realized it was Linda and Dee! Joe ran out and hailed them, bringing them back into the inn. The proprietor was perplexed, as here were the 2 ladies sitting at our table whom he’d just turned away. We implored him to feed them, and he relented. So they got some great blue cod, too, and we all had a great visit for another couple of hours, with them regaling us with stories of life on the high seas, until the entire dining room was empty and the staff was hinting for us to leave by noisily setting the tables for the next day’s breakfast.
Because there were still a couple of more hours of daylight left, we decided to take a walk along the peninsula, so off we went down a path that eventually led through the woods up to the top of a bluff, and back to the inn. Finally, with dark descending, we said our good-byes, they climbed into their extremely dusty, dishevelled camper, and puttered off, after hugs and e-mail addresses being exchanged. We’re glad we had business cards made up a while back. They’re coming in handy on this trip. They always elicit a chuckle out of the receiver, as they say ‘Carr-Weiss Institute for Shallow Thinking’.
Day 45 – Jan. 16 – Bluff to Milton
As this place provides breakfast, Joe had the ‘cooked breakfast’ and I had the ‘continental’. Their cooked breakfast always has 2 or 3 fried eggs with the orangest yolks in the world. I think that’s because the chickens are almost all free-range. They don’t cage them up in tiny cages like we do, but they scratch around on the ground for bugs and stuff, like real chickens. He also got 3 pieces of fried ham, 1 huge sausage, 2 pieces of toast with real butter and jam, a huge portion of hash browns, and a slice of orange.
I got cold cereal, yogurt, and several kinds of bread from which to make toast. They gave us orange, tomato and some other kind of juice that was dark green. I thought maybe spinach, or Swiss chard, or broccoli juice, but gave up and asked the innkeeper. ‘Grass’, he said. I just looked at him with a blank face. ‘Grass.’ ‘Sure, rabbits eat grass, why not people?’ he said. I poured myself a sip and tasted it. It was kiwi fruit juice, and was so yummy I had 2 glasses of it. Joe passed. He doesn’t eat or drink green things.
While we ate, we watched the ferry ply the rough waters from Bluff out to Stewart Island, the island a couple of hours south of NZ. Linda and Dee are on the ferry, and I’m glad we’re not. The seas are very rough and we can see the waves splashing over the deck as the ferry smashes into each wave head-on. Glad they have strong stomachs. Hope the rest of the people on the ferry do, too. They’ll need ‘em.
Remember the Indian brothers who got smashed by the glacier? Turns out one of them had the keys to the family’s rental car in his pocket. And the rental car company isn’t the usual smiley NZ-er that we keep running into. He’s going to make them pay for every day they keep the car. They can tow the car back to the rental agency if they want, but they’re having to pay until the car is physically back to them. So the jury is still out on how that story will play out.
The Burt Munro brochure said that Burt had done all his work on his motorcycle in a shed at a certain address. So to complete our Burt Munro odyssey, we headed out to see his shed. Turns out there is a house there and no sign of a shed, a yappy dog in the yard and no sign of any sort saying anything about Burt. We left disappointed, especially because we had to actually go back into Invercargill to see it, or not see it.
I need a haircut. It’s been 6 weeks since my last one, and I’m beginning to look like a sheepdog. So we went to downtown Invercargill to find a beauty salon. In the first one I stepped into, they were able to take me right away. That should have been my first clue. I’m used to having to schedule my appointment with my hairdresser 6 weeks in advance, so to be able to sit right down was unbelievable. Well, so is my haircut. Unbelievably bad!! She gave me a crewcut! I feel and look bald. There will be no more pictures taken on this trip that include me in them. I’ll always remember Invercargill as the ‘Town of the Bad Haircut’.
Now I know why Burt Munro was trying to build the world’s fastest motorcycle: so he could get out of that town as fast as he could!
And that’s just what we did after I put a bag over my head and got in the car. Headed for the coast, where we heard there were some porpoises. Called Hector’s porpoises, there is a family or pod of about 20 of them in a beautiful cove about a half-mile across. After sitting on the bluff above it for a few minutes, we saw a couple of them surface, blow, and go back under. What a thrill! The entire time we sat there, they put on a display for us, rolling and playing, while we pointed and yelped.
When we stopped to watch the porpoises, there was a single sea gull standing all alone, watching us as if he expected to get a tidbit to eat. I keep old bread just for such occasions in the trunk. So I got it out, and tossed him a few small pieces. He was delighted! Soon 4 of his friends came to join him for dinner. He transformed immediately into a jealous guardian of his territory. He lowered his head and opened his mouth and let out a raucous scream and ran at one of the other gulls. When that gull moved off, he ran at another one. Soon there was an entire flock of them and he spent the whole 15 minutes we were there defending his territory in this manner. Only occasionally did he get any of the bread. He was the only one acting like he owned the place, so I’m presuming he has staked out this special place and has made it clear that nobody else is welcome. He’d have gotten a lot more bread if he’d been willing to share, because I tossed a lot his way, but he always ran after the other birds who went for the bread instead of running after the bread. There’s probably a life lesson here.
On another deserted beach where we stopped to see a lighthouse, we saw a sea lion wandering up the beach towards us. We went closer, but stayed above the sand, hidden in the sand dunes, and he came to within about 60 feet of us. While we clicked away with our cameras, he rolled in the sand, tossing it about with his flippers and coating himself with it. Then he’d rear up on his flippers that looked like an evolutionary mistake as he wobbled around on them. He heaved his ponderous body right and left as he propelled himself with appendages that didn’t look as if they were designed for anything but swimming.
As we rounded a curve on one of the winding roads through the sheep country, we were greeted with about 40 lambs standing in the road all looking at us. They’d gotten out of the pasture and were taking the path of least resistance. On both sides of the road were tall weeds and they didn’t want to wade through them. But as we inched towards them, they all ran off into the weeds anyway, letting us pass, but not before leaving clear evidence of their having spent a lot of time standing in the road, if you know what I mean.
After a day of mostly sitting on beaches, we got tired of sight-seeing and headed for the barn. The only town that looked big enough on the map to have a motel was Milton. As we went through one town, the cops were stopping every car, then releasing them We found out there was a jack-knifed stock truck blocking the entire road north of town, where we were headed, so we had to detour about 10 miles out of our way. We finally reached the nothing town of Milton, got a motel room in a brand-new motel with the best internet service we’ve had yet, went to bed and spent the night listening to the rain pound on the roof. Doesn’t bode well for tomorrow.
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