New Zealand | February 2016 | First of Three New Zealand Posts

Hello Again. Back in February of this year – which was the middle of summer in New Zealand – I spent three weeks traveling around that country’s South Island. I chose the South Island because it has a much higher concentration of stunning and dramatic scenery than the North Island, and I was in New Zealand for the scenery.

This is my first of two posts featuring some of my photos of New Zealand. This post features photos of the Milford Sound, Fiordlands National Park, and Lake Pukaki areas of the South Island. My upcoming second post will feature the other South Island destinations that I visited.

During my rambles around the island, I drove the following main routes visiting the respective destinations, albeit with a lot of sidetracking and backtracking and lingering:

• Christchurch to Greymouth via Haast Pass.
• Greymouth to Fox Glacier
• Fox Glacier to Haast
• Haast to Wanaka
• Wanaka to Queenstown
• Queenstown to Te Anau
• Te Anau to Milford Sound and Fjordlands National Park
• Milford Sound to Invercargill
• Invercargill to Twizel and Mount Cook and Lake Pukaki
• Twizel to Tekapo
• Tekapo to Akaroa and Robinsons Bay
• Akaroa to Christchurch

To the left is a map of the South Island showing the main roads and the South Island’s major destinations (Source: Wikitravel). Before we get to my photos below, let me just say a few more things about New Zealand.

The South Island scenery is just stunningly gorgeous. Imagine, scenery of all types concentrated into an area the size of Florida! Just about every type of landform and ecosystem and climate that exists in the world, also exists just within New Zealand alone. There are glaciers, fiords, waterfalls, rolling hills, rugged mountains, subtropical forests, temperature rainforests, rocky coastlines, cliff-lined coastlines, sandy beaches, high deserts, volcanic plateaus, vast plains, alpine tundra, pine forests, and on and on.

As you likely know, New Zealand is a small country consisting of two islands, the North Island and the South Island. In terms of land area, each island is roughly the size of the State of Florida. The total population of New Zealand is 3.5 million people. Most of the population resides on the North Island. New Zealand is located southeast of Australia in the southern Pacific Ocean – between Australia and Antarctica. I flew from Sidney, Australia to Christchurch, New Zealand, which is a three hour flight.

As I mentioned, the South Island is about the same size as Florida in terms of land area, but vastly different in size in terms of population. The South Island is sparsely populated with only 1 million residents, whereas Florida has a population of 20 million. And, yes, it is true that there are more sheep than people in New Zealand, many more! In contrast to the 1 million people who live on the South Island, the South Island has 16 million sheep. Twenty years ago the South Island sheep population was at a peak of 30 million, but it has dwindled to the current 16 million because many farmers have been converting from sheep farming to dairy cow farming, which is more profitable and more in demand.

With three weeks at my disposal, I rented a small camper van and slowly toured the South Island, overnighting at campgrounds. Slowly is the key because (quite literally) around just about every bend in every road is what I call a “stop the car!!” moment. I found myself constantly stopping and pulling over, and then going again, to soak up what are often just really unbelievable views. It was interesting to watch people often just standing and staring in utter disbelief of the view in front of them.

Landscape photography enthusiasts usually point to New Zealand and Iceland as their favorite destinations. New Zealand and Iceland are considered to have the highest concentrations of dramatic and gorgeous scenery in the world. In particular, New Zealand has the most stunning mountain lakes I have ever seen!!

In my view, what makes New Zealand a must-see destination is its utter uniqueness in terms of:

• The dense concentration of fabulous scenery within a relatively small land area.
• The immensely friendly and helpful nature of New Zealanders.
• The close mix of farmland, vineyards, mountains, plains, and wilderness.
• The amazingly delicious cheeses, cream, ice cream, butter, and other dairy products.
• The purity and clarity of the air. The air is just crystal clear making for stunning photographs.
• The pure water everywhere. There is no bottled water in New Zealand. Yes, literally, no bottled drinking water. You get untreated and entirely potable deep well water directly from the tap.
• The absence or exceedingly low level of pollution. One of my major impressions of New Zealand was “Wow, this is what the earth was like before their was pollution!”
• The tidiness and well-kept nature of homes, farms, businesses, and everything!
  

  Milford Sound View.

• The delicious meat pies of all sorts – a delicious New Zealand food staple for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
• Of course, the wide variety of fresh seafood.
• The emphasis on fresh food – fresh meats; fresh vegetables; fresh dairy products; fresh seafood. Interestingly, even McDonalds ice cream cones are fresh real ice cream, in stark contrast to the fake ice cream they serve in the United States – the Kiwis would never stand for fake ice cream, not even from McDonalds!
• The fantastic locally crafted beers brewed with the best water on the planet.
• The gorgeous vineyards and wineries. The incredible Pinot Noirs!
• As I mentioned above, the wide variety of landforms and climates and scenery.

Check out the gallery below which features more photos from around Milford Sound, Lake Pukaki, and Mount Cook. Clicking on any of the photos launches the slider gallery. You may need to give it a few seconds to load.

And, don’t forget, clicking on any of the photos embedded in the text above brings about a more enhanced and brighter image of the photo. I recommend viewing these images on laptop, desktop, or tablet, as opposed to smartphone. However, smartphone will work just fine. It is just that New Zealand is so striking that seeing the images on a larger screen is quite nice.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts for a second New Zealand post, and posts for destinations in Laos, Australia, Myanmar, Japan, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, and China. Finally, my usual reminder, if you scroll to the very end of this post, there is (as in all my posts) an area to leave comments or ask me any questions that you may have. As always, I would love to hear from you. I hope that you enjoyed this post.

Images Around Lake Pukaki, Mount Cook, and Milford Sound

 

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