In the background, over my right shoulder, is the Tasman Sea (covered by fog). To my left is a cliff with the largest vertical drop in all of NZ. It goes straight down 5,000 feet (just under a mile). The sensation when flying off the glacier to over that drop off is indescribable.
JFD1
ADVENTURE!!!
About the author
The adventure begins January 12th from Chicago, O'hare. I don't know when it will come to a close.I'll try to keep my whereabouts posted along with pictures and stories as I go.
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ANCHORS AWAY!!!
Howdy!
On the way through the mountains back to Queenstown, we stopped off on one of the glacier covered mountain tops.
All of these pictures are of the mouth of the Sound at the Tasman Sea. You can see the fog that completely covered the ocean but ended just as it came into the Sound. We couldn’t boat out to sea because of it.
Milford Sound water falls
See the seals on the rocks?
Some of the scenery from Milford Sound. I put these together in an attempt to provide a perspective on size. In all of them there is a group of yellow double kayaks paddling across the water (in two of the pictures, look at the base of the mountain on the left. In the other one they are center right).
While landing at Milford Sound.
Just a few of the things I saw while helicoptering through the NZ Alps.
Queenstown is an amazing place!
The downtown and wharf area of Queenstown is constantly buzzing. Fabulous scenery, restaurants and shopping galore! There are activities that can keep a person busy doing something different for weeks. Jet boating, para-sailing, skydiving, base jumping, sailing, fishing, trekking, bungee jumping, whitewater rafting, airplane rides, helicopter rides, ferry boat rides………
There are beaches for swimming and tanning where some folks play Frisbee while others play live music and others juggle or some other kind of performance. You can hang around the wharff and participate or simply absorb the ambiance. Alternatively, you can catch one of the many tour buses to go sight seeing or go directly to a particular activity outside of town.
While it may sound hectic, it is really quite the opposite. I spent a great deal of time just sitting and watching.
Besides golfing at a Jack Nicklaus designed course and doing a fishing charter in the lake, I did the BEST activity available….a HELICOPTER ride to Milford Sound and to the tops of the Alps where we landed on a glacier!
Of all the places I’ve been in my life, of all the sites I have seen, I have NEVER seen anything as, as, as……..aw crap, I can’t even come up with the words to describe what I experienced. The Grand Canyon is really close but I wasn’t polishing rocks on mountain peaks with the belly of a helicopter when I was there.
While at Milford Sound I got to experience the rain forest in the sunshine, see seals in the wild and witness mountains that are still growing out of the sea. It was truly remarkable.
I am going to post some pictures but there is no way they capture the grandeur.
