#46 - Heading Back to Florida

I knew the day would come when I’d have to say our 4.5 month trip was over, and we are on our way home.

Sigh.....

I am writing this as we sit in the San Francisco airport waiting for our flight to Sarasota.  I don’t have anything interesting to blog about regarding the airport waiting area.  No surprise there.  And no great pictures to send.  Unless you want to see a lot of stressed out people pushing their way onto an American Airlines plane.  And a lot of rude airline employees who appear to be just tolerating their employment until they can retire.  So NOT like New Zealand!!  I can’t explain it in just a few words.  I can only say that life is very different and so much more happy and enjoyable down under. 

Oh, I just have to mention this.  As we were walking through the airport in Auckland NZ, I noticed that my shoelace was untied.  As I bent down to tie it, a teenager walking nearby us came over to me and said, “Wait, let me tie that for you.”  Before I could even utter an expression of surprise or appreciation, he had tied my shoelace and wished me a nice  day.   I may be cynical, but I think it would be a cold day in Hell before that would happen in the U.S.  

As you can imagine from all my blogging, this trip totally exceeded our expectations.  Now we are returning home just in time to prepare taxes.  Yippee!

Jeff and I are dreaming about our next adventure.  Don’t know when or where we are going.  But we ARE going.  Maybe Scotland/Ireland.  Or maybe Tuscany or the Greek Isles.  The only thing we know for sure is that the travel bug has bitten badly and we will go back to New Zealand at some point. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blogs as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.  Thanks to those of you who have taken the time to let me know that you’ve liked reading them.

Stay tuned for our next adventures.  

I’ll just leave you with this picture of a seagull we saw in NZ.  In some ways it symbolizes our current life style.  Free to take flight, ready to see where the winds take us, and enjoying the view along the way.  

Diane and Jeff

#45 - Koalas, Roos, Dingos, and the Penguin Parade

Couldn’t leave Australia without seeing some koalas, kangaroos, and other critters who call this continent home.  We saw several wallabies in the wild including a few with their joeys out in the fields. They look a lot like kangaroos but are usually a bit smaller and stockier.  But boy can they hop!  Well known marsupials include kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, possums, wombats, and Tasmanian Devils.

The best close up views of all these animals were in a park and you could tell from their lethargy around people that they were very used to being gawked at all day.  But it’s the only way we could get a few good photos and we did get to interact and feed some of them.

Kangaroos have a very short gestation period, usually around 4-5 weeks and the joey is born in an essentially fetal state.  The miniature newborn is blind, furless, and the size of a jelly bean.  It crawls across its mother’s fur and makes its way up into the pouch where it latches onto a nipple for sustinence.  It will stay there for several months, during which time it develops fully.  Then it begins to venture a bit from the pouch, feeding and learning survival skills.  Until it is ready to go out completely on its own, the joey returns to the pouch to sleep, and will seek refuge there if it senses danger.   Joeys stay in the pouch for up to a year in some species, or until the next joey is born.

Contrast this with the giraffe who is born after 14 months of gestation, is already 6 feel tall, weighs 100 or more pounds, and walks on its own after an hour or so of being born.  I continue to marvel at all the different species of animals and how nature provides each with exactly what they need to survive and flourish.

The kanagaroos in the park were very docile and took food (park approved) right out of our hands.  In one of the pictures you can see a joey in the pouch.

Look closely to see the joey in the pouch with the front and hind legs hanging ou 

The emus not only took the food out of my hand, they took the entire plastic container I was holding. Afraid they might choke on the plastic I reported this immediately to a park employee who just gave me a knowing smile as if to say, “Yeah, they’re aggressive buggers, aren’t they?”

I think this was my first time to see a dingo.  If you watched Seinfeld, you’ll remember Elaine saying “The dingo ate your baby”.  If you didn’t watch Seinfeld you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about!! The dingo is a canine that is native to Australia.  They have very keen vision and can turn their heads to almost 180 degrees in each direction.  From this photo, I’d say they also have very sharp teeth!

Dingo

But the animal that really stole the show was the koala - just too adorable for words.  They sleep about 18 hours a day and when not snoozing, they are munching away on eucalyptus leaves.  Many years ago I was able to hold a koala and it threw it’s arms around my neck and snuggled right into me.  It didn’t want to let go and neither did I!  Would have loved to take it home but Customs officials would have had something to say about that.  And besides, I didn’t have any eucalyptus trees in my back yard.

After our time at the Park, we continued farther onto Phillip Island for the most amazing part of the day.  Just before sunset we went to watch the world’s smallest penguins in their natural habitat returning ashore after a day of fishing at sea.

In an earlier blog I wrote about the opportunity we had to see the little white flippered penguins at Pohatu, and our amazing timing to see the release of one rehabilitated chick back into the sea.  Those penguins were few in numbers, and found only around Canterbury, New Zealand.  But they are very closely related to these penguins in Australia.

Tonight we witnessed a march of thousands of Little Penguins (formerly called Fairy Penguins) as they returned from the sea, waddled up onto the beach, and proceeded to march toward their nests in the sand dunes and hills.  We stood in a bunker underground which had windows at our eye level.  Just outside these windows was the path along which the penguins marched by.  So they were just a foot or two away from us and what a view it was!

About 13 inches tall, their heads and upper bodies are blue with slate-grey ear coverts fading to white underneath, from the chin to the belly.  Their flippers are blue and their feet are pink above with black soles and webbing.  Hundreds of them walked right by us, some walking slowly, others skipping along, while still others dragged along making us wonder if they’d make it.

What’s amazing is that they do this every evening and know exactly what path to take back to their nests.  To us, the thousands of nests on the hillside all looked the same.  Yet, using their sense of sight almost exclusively, they find their way back every day.

Photography of any kind was prohibited, so I don’t have any pictures to share.  But I’ll include a couple from the Internet, so you can see how cute they are!

The Little Penguins come out of the sea here and have to make their way over these rocks  to get up onto the beach and then find their nests

There are thousands of nests that look identical to this.  You can see a penguin just inside the opening of the nest. 

#44 - Australia - The Great Ocean Road

Sadly, our time in New Zealand has come to an end.  But we are on our way to Australia for a week, so the adventure continues there.  When we flew out of Dunedin, NZ we noticed this sign above the door at the airport that said, “Welcome, if you’re visiting you’ll probably want to refund that return ticket”.   It’s very, very, tempting to stay here.  Jeff and I love New Zealand and we will return!

Our Air New Zealand flight took us to Melbourne, Australia where we stayed downtown in a high rise apartment overlooking the harbor.  It was beautiful, but after enjoying the city for a couple of days, we jumped in our rental car and headed out to the “Great Ocean Road”. This route took us along cliff tops, near surfing beaches, and through lush rain forest for over 100 miles.

The coast line, much of which is now a National Park, has been sculpted over thousands of years to become one of the most impressive natural sites in Australia (and the world).  Jutting towers of rock, stacks of rocks, arches, islands, and inlets have been carved out of the soft limestone cliffs by ocean waves, wind, and rain.   The rocky coastline can be a treacherous area to navigate by boat and so has earned the title of “Shipwreck Coast”.

I have a couple hundred photos on my camera, but snapped a few with my iPhone just to give you an idea of what we saw.  The first day, we arrived at The Twelve Apostles just before sunset.  A perfect time of day to see these pillars that rise out of the ocean.  They were once connected to the mainland, but wind and waves carved them into caves, then arches, and eventually battered them down into 150 foot tall columns.  There are only 8 left (4 apostles bit the dust) but when the next stretch of cliff becomes pillars, there may be more!

The Twelve Apostles (minus a few) 

The Loch Ard Gorge is a beautiful beach inside an impressive gorge.  It is the location of the Loch Ard shipwreck which had only two young survivors.

The still clear water in the cave of the Grotto casts reflections contrasting with the fast moving water of the oceans behind it.  This cave and sinkhole is located about halfway up the cliff from sea level.

The Grotto

Our next view was of London Bridge, originally a bridge with a double arch connected to the mainland, but it collapsed in 1990.  A couple of tourists were standing on it at the time and when the two pieces of rock were separated, they had to be rescued by helicopter.   Today, people are not permitted to venture out onto these rocks.

London Bridge 

The Arch is a masterpiece of nature.  It is mounted on a harder rock below that serves as a platform for the arch.  Water pours through the arch in swells cascading out the other side.  It shows the middle stage of an island transitioning from tunnel, to arch, which will ultimately collapse to form two rock stacks.

We also captured a few other magnificent sights along our journey.

The Great Ocean Road which can also be walked in 7 days!

Erskine Falls in Great Otway National Park cascades 90 feet into a gully

#43 - The Royal Albatross and the Moeraki Boulders

I’m starting to feel like a broken record, but we had yet another incredible wildlife encounter.  This time we ventured out to the Taiaroa Head at the tip of the Otago Peninsula, just outside of Dunedin.  First came the compulsory winding road to get there.  But this 50 minute drive meandered all along the coastline and offered some amazing views.  Have I written a blog yet that didn’t have the words “amazing view” somewhere in it?

This is the location of the Royal Albatross Centre where we spent a couple of hours.  We lucked out with our timing, because the birds have incubated their eggs, and now in February the parents are sitting on the chicks for a few more weeks.  And those that weren’t sitting, were flying all around us, and that was awesome!  Each Albatross in this colony has a colored leg band for identification purposes, which allows the life story of each bird to be recorded by the Department of Conservation rangers. 

So what’s so special about these birds?  The Royal Albatross is the world’s largest seabird.  It has a wing span of over 3 meters (9.5 feet) and can fly at speeds of around 75 mph.  They are some of the longest lived birds in the world, regularly living 40 plus years.  One bird at Taiaroa raised her last chick at the age of 62! Don’t know how many eggs she pushed out over the years, but she must have been one tired old mama by the time she told her mate “hey, enough already”.  

The Royal Albatross used to breed prolifically in the Chatham Islands but in 1985 a storm destroyed much of their nesting habitat there.  Many of the birds chose to relocate to the Otago Peninsula (prime real estate, and a good decision, if I may say so).  

But what do I know?  In reality, it was not an ideal location for them as the climate was much warmer than in the Islands.  Some like it hot, but these guys don’t.  As I’ve learned, in NZ they do everything to preserve their wildlife even if it means making special accommodations.  So they installed a sprinkler system to spray water over the nests to cool the birds.  This is not just for their comfort, but for their survival.  If the parent feels the ground getting too hot it will stand up to cool off.  An unattended egg is vulnerable not just to the usual predators you would suspect (here come the stoats, ferrets, rats and feral cats again).   But their biggest threat is the fly.

Yes, you read that correctly.  If flies lay their eggs near an albatross egg, the egg or chick may become infested with maggots and the chick is likely to die.  So in this protected area, rangers patrol the nests regularly checking for problems.  While we were there we observed a ranger walk right up to an albatross and they greeted each other.  One of them was talking while the other was squawking.  We couldn’t hear the conversation, but there was obviously a mutual admiration!

Since adults only breed every other year and they only have one chick at a time, it’s critical that the babies survive.  If an adult albatross loses it’s chick, it will abandon its nest and not return for 1-2 years.  So if it looks like an egg won’t make it, the rangers remove it and replace it with an artificial egg.  The albatross doesn’t know the difference (really?) and continues to sit on the fake egg.  

Meanwhile, the rangers are looking for other nests where the egg has been abandoned.  Sometimes the parents will take off before the chick hatches.  So now you have an egg with no parent, and across the way you have a parent with no egg.  See where this is going?

So the rangers take the real abandoned egg and make the switchy-changy with the fake egg.  I know its hard to believe that an albatross would not figure this out and go “What the heck?”  But it seems to work and everyone is happy.  

The Royal Albatross mates for life and returns to the same place every other year to nest.  The male arrives first and prepares the nest.  What a guy!  Mom and Dad share incubation duty each one taking an 8 day shift, while the other goes off foraging for food.  This goes on for about 11 weeks.  When the chick finally breaks the shell it takes 3-6 days to emerge.  It is then left unguarded except for feeding visits by the parents.  The chick eats so much at this stage that it requires both parents to forage for food and feed it.  

They fledge at about 8 months.  All alone, they wait for a large gust of wind, spread their wings, and take off for their maiden voyage.  They will head east toward Chile and spend the next 5 years off the coast of South America.  After that, they will head back to New Zealand to where they were born.  But they don’t take the same route back.  Instead they keep heading east and go around the world till they get back to NZ.  Makes sense when you think how much easier it is to always have the wind at your back.  They will nap while riding a wind current.  Or they’ll touch down on the sea for a rest.  But they can put on about 118,000 miles a year.  They’ve been known to fly 8100 miles in two weeks when foraging for food.  That’s a lot of frequent flyer miles!

When they do get back “home”, they look for a mate.  They gather on the ridge lines where the males display their virility by stretching their wings and screaming raucously.  Meanwhile the admiring females are sizing them up and approach for the courtship ritual.  And so the cycle continues.  

FYI, the Albatross Centre has a live cam on the birds, so you can see what we saw and perhaps have a look at the chicks. 

http://www.doc.govt.nz/royalcam

Proof that Jeff’s arms are not as long as an albatross’ wings

Jeff’s skill (luck?) with the camera caught this albatross in flight right above us 

 Parents sitting on newly hatched chicks 

Cormorants on beach below nesting area 

While in Dunedin, we also took a drive out to Moeraki, to see the mysteriously spherical stones scattered across the beach.  Some of the boulders are big and round, while others appear to be chopped in half with only the top dome showing.  We’re talking big honkers!  Some boulders weigh several tons and are up to 6 feet high.  They are scattered along this one stretch of beach, some in clusters while others are isolated.  

Names that have been give to these boulders include: “Alien’s Brains”, “Giant Gobstoppers”, The Bowling Balls of the Gods”, and “Stonehenge of New Zealand”. 

The boulders, which were formed about 65 million years ago, consist of mud, fine silt and clay and are cemented by calcite.  After the concretions formed, large cracks formed in them, giving each a very interesting appearance.  

According to Maori legend, the boulders are the remains of eel baskets, calabashes, and kumara that washed ashore from the Araiteuru sailing canoe when it was wrecked upon landfall hundreds of years ago.  The cracks, according to this legend, are the remains of the canoe’s fishing nets.  

These boulders have become a tourist attraction so it’s hard to get a photo without lots of other people in it.  But I managed to hog one boulder for my very own photo op.  

Our drive to Moeraki was delayed by dozens of cows who were unwilling to share the road.  Cars drive on the left side of the road in NZ, but not when cows take over the lane

#42 - Doubtful Sound

You can’t go to the South Island without visiting the fjords and taking a boat out to the Sounds.  This little piece of heaven leaves a lasting impression on the brain and tingles the senses.  The best known and most visited of the fjords is Milford Sound. We had been there several years ago, so we opted to visit a less crowded area called Doubtful Sound.  

Doubtful Sound is larger and deeper than Milford Sound.  Many different forms of wildlife can be spotted here and several majestic waterfalls can be viewed even in the drier season.  

But it’s not easy to get there.  Two and a half hours by car south of Queenstown one comes to a small town called Te Anau.  From there we took a short bus ride to Lake Manapouri.  We traversed the lake in a very comfortable boat for about an hour.  Waiting for us there was a bus that took us over the rugged Wilmot Pass through the primitive forest over to Doubtful Sound where we boarded another boat to take us through the Sound out to the Tasman Sea.

So does the word “remote” come to mind?  

If you’ve ever seen a documentary about the fjords, then you’ll know that there are no words to fully describe the majesty of this part of the world.  It is physically untouched by man and evokes a feeling of solitude and serenity.  The Maori name for Doubtful Sound is Patea, which translated means “the place of silence”.

So here are some interesting facts about this area.  If you’re not in the mood for a few “wows”, compliments of Mother Nature, just skip the rest of this blog.  

In previous blogs I’ve commented on how devastating it can be when non-native species are introduced into the environment.  Well, fear not.  This area is unique in that it has only native trees.  These very same types of trees have been here for 80 million years with no introduction of anything that is not native.  There has been no genetic modification.  It’s kind of eerie riding along knowing that what you see today looks exactly like what you would have seen in the Mesozoic Age.

The next time you see some moss, you may want to pay homage.  For without moss there would be no forest.  There are over 1000 mosses and lichens here that absorb moisture and are nutrient rich.  They provide the base for trees and shrubs to grow.  The trees would have a tough time growing just on rocks.

This is one of the wettest places on earth with an average of over 200 days a year of rain. The skies deliver around 21-27 feet (not inches) of rain which makes the waterfalls look amazing.  

When they blasted out the mountain to make the road connecting the Lake to the Sound, all living vegetation was destroyed.  But Mother Nature “healed” the area.  It is now replete with beech trees, each of which is a home for 200 other species of plant life.  This lends new meaning to the expression “Life is a beech”.  

Did you know salt water and fresh water don’t mix?  Not here anyway.  About 18-24 feet of fresh water falls down from the mountains on top of the sea water.  The two layers don’t mix and the top layer is stained from forest floor run-off.  The result is dark water on top and so certain species that would only live normally in deep water can be found just ten meters below the surface here.  

Why did Captain Cook name this place Doubtful Sound?  He explored the area and because there were so many arms to the sound he had doubts about ever being able to come back and find the same locations again.  

We didn’t see too much wildlife until we got out to the end of the Sound into the Tasman Sea where we saw several fur seals sitting on the rocks much to our delight!   This is once again a situation where the photos don’t do the subject justice.  

View of Doubtful Sound from the Untouched Forest 

#41 - Steamship and Glow Worms

There’s a lot to do around Queenstown.  So after our helicopter ride (the highlight of this area for us), we took a little cruise on Lake Wakatipu over to Walter Peak on a 106 year old coal fired steamship.  It was launched in the same year as the Titanic in 1912.  Fortunately, there are no icebergs on this lake. 

Jeff descended into the boiler room and watched them shovel coal.  The stoker was very busy, as the ship burns one ton of coal every hour!  I’m thinking this guy needs a good long shower when he gets home at night.  

The next day we ventured down to Te Anau where we went to the Glow Worm caves.

As I kid, I remember the song, “Glow little glow worm, glimmer, glimmer”.  We used to catch fireflies in jars in the summer and were mesmerized by the on again, off again, blinking lights they emitted.  So when I had an opportunity to see the glow worms in their natural habitat, I thought, let’s find out what makes them glow.

The glow worms in NZ are found only in caves and they are not like the ones I captured in a jar.  And tourists flock by the thousands to see them. They like dark, very damp places (the glow worms, not the tourists).  Unless they are happy they won’t glow.  They attach themselves to horizontal places like ceilings of the caves and their bluish-white lights give the appearance of twinkling stars in a night sky.  It’s really quite a beautiful site as you travel through the cave on a small boat, gazing at thousands of these little twinkling lights.  

So here’s what’s really going on.  

The lifecycle of a Glowworm is in 4 stages and takes about 11 months.  Eggs are laid in clutches of 30-40 on walls and ceilings.  Immediately upon hatching from the egg, the larvae (aka maggots) emit a light, build a nest, put down lines, and feed.  About the length of a matchstick, they put out strings of a sticky substance that traps insects on which they feed.  

Starting to sound a little less glamorous, huh?  Keep reading.  

The glow is the result of bioluminescence, which is a reaction between the chemicals given off by the glowworm and oxygen in the air.  This reaction produces light.  Insects fly towards the light and get stuck in the sticky lines they’ve put out.  

So how are these lines created?  The larva construct a tube of mucus up to a foot long.  Then it coughs up dozens of silk strings, about a sixth the width of a human hair, and up to nearly two feet long, and dangles them from the bottom of the tube.  It regurgitates mucus onto the silk, which collect in tiny droplets.  

Insects fly toward the beckoning light and get stuck in this glue-like mucus.  The glow worm pulls up the strings, eating them and pulling them up until it comes to the prey.  Dinner is served.  

Typically the glow worm gets along well with its thousands of neighbors, but if it feels attacked it will kill and eat a threatening fellow glow worm.  

Once a glow worm larva becomes an adult, things look pretty grim.  The glow has worn off, so to speak.  The adult, which looks like a large mosquito, has no digestive system so it can’t eat.  They have no mouth and their only function is to reproduce.  Usually a male is waiting for the female to emerge from the pupa and mating takes place immediately.  The female only lives a few days. Okay, so we’re looking at wild sex for a couple days, but starvation and then death.  Glad I wasn’t born a glowworm.  

We had a great guide who took us through the caves.  At the end, he said lots of people come for this tour because they read about how enchanting the glow worms are.  

He asked, “How many of you would have paid to come to see this if we told you you’d be seeing bunch of maggots who cough up mucus, eat their own poop, and cannibalize their neighboring glow worms?”

Point well taken.  

As a bonus on this trip, we also experienced the beauty of the caves themselves.  This underground world is astonishingly beautiful.  By geological standards the caves are very young, only 12,000 years old.  A foreceful river flows through them carving out passages filled with limestone rocks, whirlpools and a roaring underground waterfall.  The glow worms don’t like all this noise.  So they hide out in a silent hidden grotto which is accessible only by boat.

P.S.  In case you were wondering, it has been established that the glow worm does not make a good pet.

Photography is not allowed in the caves as any light makes the glow worms shut down their glowers.  I got these photos off the internet just to give you an idea of what it looks like. 

     This is pretty much what it looked like except the lights were more blue than green.                                                          

Below are sticky strings that capture “food” 

The adult glowworm looks like a large mosquito. They have no mouth and their only function

Sticky strings that capture “food” 

#40 - Helicopter Ride Over the Glaciers

After our amazing wildlife encounters on the Banks Peninsula we headed to Queenstown, one of the most visited towns in New Zealand.  It’s no wonder all the tourists flock here.  The scenery is absolutely stunning.  Lakes and mountains galore.  But it was just a bit too “touristy” and busy for our liking, so we found a great place to stay about 20 minutes outside town.  It was managed by a really nice couple and our 5 nights there gave us a little respit from being on the go so much.

That being said, the first thing we did was book a helicopter ride over the area.  Ya just can’t keep us down.

Shortly after take off the woman next to me grabbed me and pulled me toward her.  I thought she was scared and so tried to reassure her.  But her only response was to pull me in even closer.  I soon discovered that she didn’t speak a word of English and my Chinese is... ah not so good.  But then she took out her phone attached to her “selfie stick” and proceeded to snap three photos of herself and me.  I’m still trying to figure out what that was all about.

As strange as this sounds the same thing happened to Jeff when we were on a boat.  A young Chinese woman came over to him and led him by the arm to the railing where she proceeded to take selfies with him.  I’m not sure if it is a cultural thing, or what explanation to put on this.

Oh well, maybe when these women get back home they’ll be talking about their wonderful new BFFs.  Glad to oblige.

Anyhow, back to the helicopter experience.  We took off from Queenstown and headed through the valleys and up to the glaciers.  A highlight of the trip was actually landing on a glacier and playing in real snow and ice.

The pictures speak for themselves.  So do our smiles!

Views of Mount Aspiring National Park 

We landed on a glacier and threw snowballs at each other

Our pilot did a great job of taking us close to the mountains,  over the lakes, and bringing us back safely.