Fiordland Part 1

Our first trip outside of Dunedin! Fiordland National Park!

You might be thinking "hey where is the 'J' in fiord?" well I've got no clue.

The first night we slept here, not a bad view, that is when it wasn't raining. But our new tent seemed to hold up well against the rain.

It's great that the National Park itself is free to enter and the camp sites (all basic sites) are only $5 per person per night. There are also campgrounds outside the park that are FREE per night, run by the Department of Conservation.

The next morning we were off to Milford Sound. The road leading up to the sound is amazing.

Classic big fern from NZ shot.

At last here it is, Mitre Peak and Milford Sound. Spent a few hours looking around here, although not that much to do unless you want to drop some cash on a boat tour and since Kate is a poor student and I'm unemployed we weren't about to do that.

Spent the rest of the sunny day hiking... I mean TRAMPING, around the alpine lakes.

This Kaka bird was in a cage, but you can pretend that we saw it in the wild with a perfectly halved apple.

Part 2 soon….

Frantic Feb

Whew. February has been a busy month. We’ve moved into an apartment, bought a car, I’ve got my work visa, done tons of walking around the city, visited tons of thrift store (and there are LOTS in this city) and all the other moving to a new place and setting up a new home type of things. And we snuck a trip to Fiordland in as well (more on that later).

Here we are on the first day in the new place, only 1 mug and the thermos top to drink out of, but we did have some chocolate with Kiwi fruit in it.


Opening up my visa!

And our new beauty, a 1996 Nissan Sentra Q. NZ made, which is a bit rare since the last car assembly plant in NZ closed its doors sometime in the late 1990s and now all the cars are imported new or used (mostly from Japan).


Still waiting on the internet at home, which we were told would take “about two weeks.” Currently it has been near 4 weeks and although the company is apologetic about the delay, it still doesn’t give me internet at home. If it doesn’t come by the end of the week, head will roll (or we’ll go with a different company).

More soon!

Botanic Gardens

Here is a look at the botanic gardens only a 5 minute walk from our apartment.

The rose garden

Inside the tropical greenhouse

A curious Kea (native alpine parrot of NZ) who was attracted to my phone at the aviary.

And some ducks who stole the bag of food right out of my hands, ran behind a tree to hide and gobbled the whole bag down!