Kepler Track

The Kepler Track is another famous hike in the south island that we were able to do while staying in Queenstown. This one was an overnight camping trip that included what was supposed to be a 6 hour round trip hike to the top and back. I however decided my time was put to much better use by hiking about an hour and a half setting up camp and soaking up the rays next to the lake.

Charles, as usual, wanted to make it to the top and that is why you will notice just him in those scenic views from above. I think I have decided my favorite bit of vegetation is those crazy furn looking plants. They seem to take over in some places and look so amazing, I particularly love the things that poke out of the top, they just look too funny. Charles seems to prefer the trees with the Spanish moss.

As you may have also noticed from the panoramic photos, Charles is enjoying the new features and software of the camera he picked up before we left NC. You can really get a feel of things with views like these. Enjoy...

Glenorchy; Routeburn Track

Hello all, thanks for being patient with our posts. We still have limited access to the internet but should hopefully get hooked up this week at our new apartment. No one seems to be in any hurry here to get things done including the internet people.

The Routeburn track was one of our day hikes while in Queenstown. As you may have noticed from previous posts, Queenstown is on a lake and Glenorchy is the town located at the opposite side of the lake from the place we were staying so we decided to check it out. This was a fun day for us as you can see. If you look really hard at the waterfall picture you can see Charles, he was feeling a little "where's waldo" that day. For those of you who know Charles you can imagine he would take advantage of any opportunity to jump around rocks and see how high he can climb. This particular track didn't actually lead to the waterfall but someone, cough Charles, was determined to make their way to the water... and so we did.

I decided my time was better spent taking pictures of the monkey climbing along and to relax below and take in the scenery (wine may or may not have been involved I can't quite confirm).

Doubtful Sound

We took a little adventure out into Doubtful Sound in Fiordland. Fiordland is a fairly large region covering pretty much all of the south-western corner of the South Island. It is a mountainous region carved up by fiords, lakes, rivers, etc., but almost wholly without access by roads. So you either have to hop on a boat or hike for several days to check it out - we hopped on a boat :)

Not sure if the pics do it justice, but Doubtful Sound is a fairly narrow body of water - it looks kindof like a smallish lake back in the US - except that it is basically in a mountain range so the banks of the fiord are steep-sided mountain tops. {Now, for your history lesson, fiords are usually long, narrow bodies of water with steep sides carved out by glaciers and they are usually connected to the sea, although they mostly contain fresh water.}

Needless to say, the place is really, really cool. The name Doubtful Sound was given by Captain Cook because, as he was sailing in the Tasman Sea around NZ, the entrance to Doubtful Sound looked so narrow that he did not think he could navigate his ship inland through it. It is an almost untouched rain forest-type area with endangered animals (see the Fiordland Yellow-Crested Penguin in pic).

Also, pretty sure we found Treebeard out there in the forest and I swear he winked at me :) - you can see some of his smaller brothers in the pics. The scene for Fangorn Forest was shot nearby as all the old trees have all sorts of moss and plants growing on them - would be a pretty erie forest at night. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, my apologies. For those of you who do, welcome to the cool club.

In short, any of you guys planning to come over here to visit need to check out this place.

Take care,

Lana & Charles

PS - GO HEELS!