Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Remainder of Wellington, and a Token of Auckland

Find the last remaining pictures from my trip here.
In all, the trip was fantastic, and I missed Ian and the dogs a lot by the time Susan and I taxied back into SeaTac last week (and 3 hours later I went back to the clinic for my infusion).

November 2009 through November 2010 saw me in 9 different countries, on 6 different continents. I've had to add extra pages to my passport! I now have a specific travel goal--Antarctica in the next 4 1/2 years, so I can somehow get that trip into this passport as well.

Quite the whirlwind of a year!

Pictures of Milford Sound

Queenstown, NZ, is ideally set up for hemorrhaging money. The landscape is immediate and spectacular, with a gondola leading to a ski slope (and, in the warmer months, a luge for tourists to ride, although we didn't) right in the center of town, endless marching rows of sawtoothed, black and white mountain peaks, several blue-white, icy, braided glacial rivers, and deep gorges abounding, either for jet-boating down, or bungee jumping into. We didn't take advantage of all of our options (the aforementioned gondola and luge, four-wheeling in a canyon somewhere, bungee jumping), but we did take a jet boat ride (sorry, no pics--although the official one was funny, because they yelled at us to wave at the camera and Susan and I were the only ones on the boat who didn't see where the camera was and so we're both waving randomly off at a 45 degree angle), and a spectacular flight into and out of Milford Sound (we opted not to take the 3-hour cruise of the sound itself--I'd rather kayak if I'm going to be on the water and we were conserving time).
I think this area of New Zealand's South Island is also known at Fjordland; it certainly should be.
Anyway, here are the pictures. They do not REMOTELY do justice to the spectacular landscape.