JFD1

After it all.......

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:04:00 -0600

After the beaches and mountains and volcanoes and thermal ponds and fishing and glaciers and mountains and golf and gliders and mountains and whales and dolphins and mountains and sunshine and great food and scenery and, did I say mountains???

Well, it’s been a month and I miss home! It’s time to find my way back to friends, family and my own bed.

Then a really cool thing happened…WHALES!! There were...

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:58:58 -0600

Then a really cool thing happened…WHALES!! There were sperm whales all around and I learned a lot about them.

Fun facts to know about. Sperm whales are carnivorous truly loving large squid for lunch. They are born in the warm tropical waters and nurse for a couple years and live with mom for about five years. Then, the males go away in a “pod” to colder water that they can live in comfy because they have much more blubber to insulate their bodies then the females. The males hang together as a group until they reach around thirty when they get fed up with their mates and go solitary. When they get to about 50, they go back to warmer water to look for love and live to about 80. The females really never leave the warmer water and start mating as early as 15.

It was really special to be so close to these guys as they oxygenated for about 5 minutes prior to a dive. When they went down, they always waved their tail (flute) and disappeared with the average dive being about 45 minutes but up to as long as 2.5 hours.

While in Kaikoura I went for a little boat ride and some of the...

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:45:54 -0600

While in Kaikoura I went for a little boat ride and some of the locals came out to play! They were so cute…they rode the bow waves and jumped and danced all around the boat. There were lots of little babies that were only a couple of feet long that really did a lot of jumping.

After Queenstown.....

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:39:00 -0600

I just started bumping around and looking! I made my way back towards Christchurch and played some golf. Then, I went into Christchurch and did some sightseeing around town (nothing remarkable). I then headed north to Kaikoura. This is a sleepy little town that doesn’t want to be anything more then a fishing and whale watching town. It was another beautiful drive through countryside and winding mountain roads.

It's nice to hear from you by your comments and emails....

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:29:00 -0600

….it kinda keeps me in touch with home. While I try, it’s really hard to reply to all emails. The internet is really unreliable. It’s taken me as long as two hours to write one single note. If I don’t respond to your note, it won’t be because I didn’t try.

Another local fishing hole.

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:49:30 -0600

Another local fishing hole.

My last sunset at Queenstown! (at least for this trip)

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:48:00 -0600

My last sunset at Queenstown! (at least for this trip)

Look at this picture! Is it any wonder why they filmed Lord of...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:44:53 -0600

Look at this picture! Is it any wonder why they filmed Lord of The Rings here???

Queenstown from the fourth green at Jack’s Point Golf Club...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:41:00 -0600

Queenstown from the fourth green at Jack’s Point Golf Club (designed by Jack Nicklaus).

This is a view of Queenstown as we returned in the helicopter....

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:38:13 -0600

This is a view of Queenstown as we returned in the helicopter. The downtown area is on the left and lower part of the rectangular shaped harbor center right in the photo. Jack’s Point (golf course) is the finger of land in the upper left corner of the photo.

In the background, over my right shoulder, is the Tasman Sea...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:29:42 -0600

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.

Howdy!

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:20:56 -0600

Howdy!

On the way through the mountains back to Queenstown, we stopped...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:13:02 -0600

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...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:06:39 -0600

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

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:51:26 -0600

Milford Sound water falls

See the seals on the rocks?

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:43:09 -0600

See the seals on the rocks?

Some of the scenery from Milford Sound. I put these together in...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:34:00 -0600

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.

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:28:27 -0600

While landing at Milford Sound.

Just a few of the things I saw while helicoptering through the...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:23:03 -0600

Just a few of the things I saw while helicoptering through the NZ Alps.

Queenstown is an amazing place!

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:39:00 -0600

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.