Sandflies, Mountains, Rugby, and Sleeping Seals... A Few More NZ Adventures

[Oct 8-11, 2011]  Dunedin was a cute town to stay in, but we had a schedule to keep, so the next morning we continued on, but before we left town checked out Baldwin Street, the world's steepest street. It might be something of a quietly-kept secret, as none of us were previously aware that Dunedin was home to the world-record setting steep street, but it didn't disappoint. We parked at the very bottom of (the flattest part) and watched tiny, ant-like tourists climbing up what looked like one of those Hot Wheels ramps for toy cars from the '80s. We all happily admitted we were far too lazy to try walking it ourselves, but got a taste of what was probably the world's second-steepest street, later on in Queenstown (but more on that later).

Our original road trip plan had us tracing the southern coast all the way around to Te Anau, a bit inland, taking in the Catlins and Invercargill along the way. But as we'd just spent the last three days almost entirely in the car, we decided to cut quickly across the island to Te Anau and allow for an extra day to relax in Queenstown, where Stephane and Jenny visited not long before and found to be lovely. Note to anyone planning a driving exploration of New Zealand: it may look like short drives on a map, but it's best to take it slowly and allow yourself the time to enjoy the sights outside of the car! That said, the daylight hours are long, even in October, and you can easily drive well into the evening and think it's still 4pm... we still carry a bit of that Aussie night-driving fear from our many 'roo-dodging' experiences years back.

Allez Les Bleus!

An ecstatic win

Te Anau is a tiny but very touristy town in NZ's Fjordland region, built on the incredibly pretty (are we even surprised anymore?) Lake Te Anau. It's the main jumping-off spot for visiting Milford and Doubtful Sounds, two fjords many visitors explore by boat, but still a good 2.5 hour drive from Milford Sound-- an area of very remote and inaccessible wilderness. But before our trek out to the fjords, we spent the evening in The Moose, where in fact, where the entire town and all of its tourists had congregated inside to watch the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals. The game was especially important to our travelling party, as France was facing off against England in what was sure to be an exciting game. With the help of Jenny & Stephane's red, blue and white wigs and paraphernalia, we got in touch with our long-lost French roots and cheered on "Les Bleus", surprisingly, with quite an unproportionate number of passionate French supporters for the size of Te Anau. We subsequently learned the French national anthem and a few sports cheers, and when they beat England, the entire bar went crazy. It was so much fun to watch (and not really all that hard to understand) and it must have been around the time that we got really, really hooked on rugby...

But onto more adventures! That next morning we hopped in the car and set off on Milford Road, where we wound between mountains, for the first hour, higher and higher until we reached patches of snow (which we couldn't resist a frolic in), and entered into the Homer Tunnel-- a 1.2km tunnel that veers seemingly endlessly through a mountain, on a downward slope, which was a strange feeling. The tunnel is an incredible feat of engineering and construction, started as a job-creation scheme during the Great Depression, it took nearly 20 years to dig, and only recently was widened to accommodate two lanes of vehicles.

Mirror Lake

On the other side of the Homer Tunnel, the mountains appeared to go on forever to the still-hidden fjords. The highway continued to wind downwards, with plenty of great stops to check out, like Mirror Lake, until we reached Milford Sound. That's where we had our first encounter with the irritating New Zealand sandfly: here we were, innocently emerging from the car when suddenly we were ambushed! It appeared others were having the same problems, so we took a few hurried photos with the amazing (but hard to concretrate on) backdrop of Milford Sound, and dashed to the boats, where thankfully someone had thought to build a large structure made of glass, where we could enjoy the views without swatting. Luckily, thanks to the chilly temperatures we wore many layers of clothing, which the sandflies couldn't bite through, but Dayle still managed to find one persistently sucking blood out from between two of her fingers-- a bite which didn't disappear or cease itching for more than two weeks following the visit.

Glorious Milford Sound

But we suppose, if the sandfly terror was our admission fee to get down into the gorgeous natural scenery in Fjordland, well, it was worth it. We set off on our 2-hour boat cruise from the end of Milford Sound to the ocean (15 km), watching the weather change numerous times from sunny to cloudy to rainy to sunny. Seals swam alongside out boat as we shrieked with delight. The captain steered the boat underneath waterfalls plummetting down the cliffs on either side of the fjord and right up to impressive rock formations, and shared impressive facts about the area. Probably one of the highlights was Seal Rock, one of the only parts of the fjord (it was massive cliffs everywhere) accessible to seals climbing out of the water to rest, and we learned the incredible cuteness power of a mass of sleeping seals on a rock. It was a pretty great afternoon.

Waterfall fun

Following our sandfly dash back to the car (a pity we couldn't stroll more slowly through the lush fern-filled coastal rainforest), we made a dash back to Te Anau, and then onwards to Queenstown, to be done with the driving already. After a little bit of hunting, we found a sweet, sweet place to rest our feet for the next few days with fabulous views of Lake Wakatipu in the centre of town. We didn't think about the fact that the near-vertical walk down Turner Street to the heart of Queenstown also meant a horrific trudge up at the end of the night, but it was rugby time again (this time New Zealand vs. Argentina) and so finding a big screen was mandatory. It was another good game--and unexpectedly AMAZING food at the Ballarat Trading Company-- and we took it as a good omen for our trip to continue in the best of fates.

We spent the next few days doing silly tourist things in Queenstown: eating impossibly massive burgers at the legendary Fergburger, wandering around Lake Wakatipu, taking the Skyline gondola for views high above Queenstown (and having a blast riding the luge around the tracks on the peak), and playing a ridiculous but adorable mini-golf course made up of a miniature robotic town, sampling a good variety of local wines, and relaxing in our awesome two-storey townhouse (much nicer than any of the apartments any of us have lived in). It was good times for our last few days, before Stephane and Jenny left us to take in more live rugby on the North Island....

Mmmm, Fergburger for breakfast.

The Luge

Jenny putts for the win

Buggered!

Last week a funny thing happened on the Gold Coast. It's usually pretty breezy here, but one day the wind died down and was replaced by other sounds- a faint buzzing, the occasional "whap!", and we started noticing these large shiny black beetles that were suddenly EVERYWHERE, buzzing around, flying into things, and creating mild havoc here on the coast.

I'm not sure if they arrived here gradually or what. My first encounter with these creatures was on one of my long beach walks south along the shoreline to the neighbouring suburb of Broadbeach. It's always fun to see what the ocean has washed up on the beach in the morning - sometimes it's jellyfish, sometimes seashells, but I got to this one patch that Tuesday morning last week and it was black - and as I grew close I could see it was absolutely covered in squirming beetles, almost the size of your thumb, who mostly were stuck on their backs, trying desperately to flip themselves back over, as beetles do. I snapped a few photos and the beetle patch was over in a couple metres, and I was soon carrying on my business like usual.

Wednesday evening was hellishly hot and sticky, so after a long day of running around, crossing things off the to-do list, I decided to go for swim before Adrian got back from school. I was just finishing my first lap as the sun dipped lower when I felt something pinching the inside of my upper arm. I looked...and screamed! There was one of those beetles, latched onto my arm... I flailed around in the pool, trying to shoo it away, as I noticing a couple other beetles swimming in my direction. Aren't bugs supposed to die when they fall in the pool? It was hard enough to shake off its iron grip, while trying to only scream quietly so the family in the next pool wouldn't come running and find me in my bug-attack distress. Once I was safely out of the water, I noticed more of the beetles flying in and - PLOOP! - diving straight into the pool with glee.

After that, I stayed away from the pool, but we started noticing these things everywhere- in fact, there were parts of the beach that were almost solid black- like, where did these things come from? And they not only swim, but they fly too, and then they just die soon after they hit the ground, so you can't walk around in bare feet (as everyone does here!), or you'll step on a million beetle carcasses.

Our local paper, the Gold Coast Bulletin, called it a FREAK BEETLE PLAGUE. On Saturday, the front page had a picture of a man in a hospital bed with the (very awesome and Toronto Sun-like) headline "BUG-GERED)"... and the story goes that apparently this guy was riding his bike down the road, riding over what he thought was an oil slick, but it was in fact a pile of these beetles (which have been swept to the sides of the streets 3x a day by city council street sweepers). His bike went skidding and he crashed badly, thanks to these stupid beetles.

All we know right now is it's not at all a normal occurrence and that our local environmental people are puzzled that we're suddenly inundated by these freshwater beetles along the coast (but at least it explains the many beach deaths). And that it's such a hilarious/weird/scary problem to have. And that was just last week; this week it's been giant grasshoppers flying into our apartment... who knows what's next?

For more, check out: Beetles take over Surfers Paradise