Pages in New Zealand

NZ - Part 3 ../images/travel/2015/02/thumbs/07.jpg

NZ - Part 2 ../images/travel/2015/01/thumbs/01.jpg

NZ - Part 1

New Zealand 2015 - Part 2

Part 2 leads us through the Alpine Highway and along the west coast to Queenstown.

Hier gehts durch den Alpine Highway nach Westen und dann entlang der Küste Richtung Queenstown

Content:

Southern Alps towards Queenstown

Driving West

First stop at one of the large lakes. Many more would follow but I didn't know yet.

A patch of flowers

Alpine Highway

Surprise on the Alpine Highway. These rocks at Castle Hill are giant limestone boulders.

They are frequently used by rock climbers. One of the Narnia movies had a major scene filmed nearby.

Flat valleys between large mountains. This is real snow on the mountains. You can see the difference here between the white snow and the erosion on the other mountains. First I wasn't so sure if it was dirty snow or not.

Surprisingly easy drive and well built road.
The previous set of images are taken at the Devils Punchbowl Waterfall midway on the Alpine Hwy.

Kea

The only mountain Parrot lives here and is notorious for stealing rubber from cars. They are thought to be very intelligent. Living in a harsh environment lets them constantly experiment with things.

BBC documentary

Hokitika

Franz-Joseph Glazier

Getting up very early to walk to the glazier face. It took about 45 minutes from the car park. Pretty cool to go from the sub tropics to a glazier in just 45 minutes.

The face of the glazier is of cause receding. I guess it was a lot more impressive. Still a few bits of glazier ice was remaining at the look out.

Also a little feral goat which apparently are pest here. Also pest are Australian possums which eat all the bird eggs. New Zealand has many totally different plants and animals.

Don't get fooled about the size here. Everything is massive or very high.