30 December 2009

Day trip to Doubtful Sound - December 30, 2009

THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE:


The picture shows our ferry tour through Doubtful Sound. Looking at a map, Doubtful Sound is in Fiordland National Park, in the south west corner of NZ. Doubtful Sound is neither "doubtful" nor a "sound", much like Rhode Island is neither a "road" nor an "island". Discuss. There is no doubting the majesty of this natural topography. Plus the sharp profile of the mountains were carved by advancing/retreating glaciers, making it a fiord/fjord instead of a "sound" (which is carved by flowing water sources).

The weather provided a smorgasbord (keeping with the Scandavian/fjord theme) of weather patterns. Most of it was rain and fog, as you can see in the picture. No worries, blue skies broke through on occasion. The low fog gave perspective to how tall these mountains were.



Seeing this guy/girl was exciting. A school of dolphins swam close to our ferry, while a few wild members showed-off by riding the waves of the ferry's bow. Hey, it's NZ...even the wildlife enjoys extreme sports. The dolphin shadowed us for about 10 minutes. I think we were running the wildcat offense, sans Ronnie Brown.



Your authors braving the wind and cold on the ferry's aft.




Somewhere over the rainbow sheep chew grass. Who knew? Our first NZ rainbow astonished us with its beauty and relative closeness. Since then I think we have seen one rainbow per day. The interesting part of the rainbows we see is that you can invariably see where it begins and where it ends. Technically we haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure there is no pot of gold; but you might be able to find a cereal box with delicious marshmellows. Half eaten if I got there first.

Apparently the sheep were oblivious to the wonders of light and water that were occuring behind them. They were doing what they should be doing: eating grass. How bizarre. (US CAFO's should take a page out NZ's agricultural book.) I digress. A wise CPWA worker once recommended that the CPWA have sheep "cut" the grass on the CPWA's land. He might not have realized that the sheep would put him out of a job. Perhaps, though, he was onto something.



A human grazing. Or rather, a human eating an oversized fish burger. We stopped by PJ's Fish and Chips in Queenstown to partake in their pesce. I figured we should sample the fabled fish and chips. Nicolle tackled this burger with determination, though I helped her to finish the burger. My meal was the fish and chips with mushy peas. The fish (Hari?) was okay, same with the chips. The mushy peas were somewhat to very mushy; I could have done without them. In full disclosure though, I'm not a fan of any type of peas. Another nail in the coffin of British cuisine.

1 comment:

  1. C & N- I keep trying to post a comment and it never seems to go through.......so here I go again. :-) Your pictures are absolutely breathtaking and beautiful. You guys sound like you're having a fantastic time! Keep blogging!

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