Fiordlands, Aspiring and More

Water, rock, forest and sky. These elements, arrayed on an imposing scale, compose the Southern Fjords. Men are only visitors here. Carved by glaciers, the water is as deep as the mountains are high. Both extremes are cold, but the black depths are spared the gales and pummeling rains. The granite here allows no roots to penetrate, so the trees must find purchase upon the mosses that cling directly to the slopes. When the rain falls after a dry spell, this grip is undermined, and great swaths of forest slide into the depths. In time, perhaps one hundred lifetimes, they return. 

We landed in Queenstown before heading south and westward. Below is a view of the Remarkables (etched in cloud, middle-left) and Lake Wakatipu from Ben Lomond Mountain.

And here is a video of us at the summit.

Onward then to Lake Manapouri and Deep Cove, where we boarded the Breaksea Girl. Here is she is moored in Pickersgill's Harbour as seen from Crayfish Island, where Captain Cook spent the better part of 1773.

While the scene is tranquil, we endured roiling seas from Doubtful Sound to the Acheron Passage before tucking into the relative calm of Dusky Sound. Even here, a nor'wester blew at 50 knots all night before the weather settled. Given the conditions, further ocean passage down to Preservation Inlet was abandoned in favor of a deeper and more liesurely exploration of Dusky and Doubtful Sounds.

The two pictures immediately below depict the same view of Cascade Cove at sunset then again at sunrise the following morning. This is as good an example as any of the protean "moods" of the Fjords.

On the fourth day of the voyage, heavy rains fell (the night before, the first fall snow had dusted the mountain peaks). This change in the weather transformed the landscape yet again, as innumerable waterfalls carried the day's rains back to the sea.

The day prior, we had navigated into a massive flock of sooty shearwater (or "muttonbirds") feeding-- an exceedingly rare sight captured on film below.

After our land-legs had retuned, we headed up into the heart of Central Otago, using Wanaka as our base to explore Mount Aspiring National Park. On the advice of a friend, we booked a fly-walk-jetboat combination called the Siberia Experience. Here's some footage of the last couple minutes of the flight, as our cessna 180 hairpins back into the Siberia Valley for a landing.

Here's a picture taken at the end of the hike as we prepare to board our jet boat.

And finally, for good measure, a panorama of the Rob Roy glacier.