Te Anau and Milford Sound
The road from Queenstown to Te Anau is gorgeous. This shot looks
back towards Queenstown from the end of the lake:
We stopped along the road on the way to Milford Sound from Te Anau and
peered down into a valley.
Milford Sound is a big bay surrounded by tall mountains with about one
zillion waterfalls. We were there just after it had rained all night,
so the waterfalls were all running full. This is a picture of one
of them, with a fairly large tour boat at the base for scale.
The road between Milford and Te Anau is very twisty. This photo looks
down from the north side of the Homer tunnel.
Possibly our favorite bird in New Zealand was the Kea. They are fairly
large parrots, the only parrots that live in Alpine climates. There
are warning signs near where Keas are found saying to watch out, because
they like to rip up boots, motorcycle saddles, and tear the rubber off
of cars. Here's one next to Diane:
There are some more pictures of the road to
Milford, including some shots of the Homer
Tunnel.
The Takahe, a bird once thought extinct, lives near Te Anau. There
are about 200-250 of them left in the world. They are extremely friendly
and quite odd looking - kind of like a half-parrot, half-turkey.
The same sanctuary also had a Pukeko and some of her young:
