Miner's shacks..... some built into caves....
The view from the pass...
Queenstown park.
The one thing I wanted to do in Queenstown, was to take a photo tour. I really wanted to go because it promised to take us off the beaten path in a 4-wheel drive, and as New Zealand has lots of dirt roads, I thought it would give me great scenery I otherwise wouldn't see. But the guy ended up giving me great tips on how to use my camera on manual settings. The most important one, which made an incredible difference, was that because of the hole in the ozone, there is more ultra-violet light getting through. Our brains adjust, so the scenery looks normal to us. But we have to fool the camera by setting the white balance to cloudy, even on a sunny day. After this simple tip, my photos were so much more vivid in color... Here are some pics I took with the photographer's SLR camera (with his help)...
2 photos taken of the same scene, with different settings:
Next day, on to Te Anau....
The photographer told me about a beautiful valley on the way to Te Anau... he neglected to mention it was 35 miles down a dirt road... I set off down it, and quickly realized I was running low on gas... Didn't see a gas station since Queenstown, and didn't see another car on this dirt road... Barely made it back off the dirt road and drove into Te Anau on fumes... Very nerve-wracking, but it was worth the drive:
After I got to Te Anau, I went on an evening tour of the Glo-Worm caves.... Couldn't take pictures of the Glo-worms, but a ferry took us across the lake and then we got into smaller boats, which took us on an underground river into the caves. Glo-worms are larvae which build strings hanging from the ceiling which are sticky and glow in the dark to attract bugs, which then get stuck ... fascinating... pics from the internet...
On the way.... Lake Wakatipu...
Next day, I got up early to drive to Milford Sound... sunrise on the way....
From the end of the road, I took a 2 hour nature cruise around Milford Sound. We saw seals, bottle-nosed dolphins, and rainbows... some of these mountains are taller than the Empire State building...
Fairy Falls...
Plane against Milford Sound wall...
On the way back to Te Anau, I had more time to stop to sight-see...
Looking down on a waterfall from above...
The Kea is a rare bird, but most of them live in the Milford Sound area... they are unafraid of people and will go right inside your car and look for food, even tear apart your car interior!
Part 3... tuatura, Dunedin, stones, waterfall, penguin, Akaroa...
No comments:
Post a Comment