NZ with Ray & Mary, Part 2

March 8, on the road again! This is one of our longest drives at 355 km and over 5 hours, from Queenstown to Franz Josef, a small town on the west coast. It is known for the Franz Josef Glacier. The glaciers in NZ have generally been retreating due to global warming, but this one is a bit special because it is also greatly affected by variations in snowfall. It has a large snow catchment area that funnels snow down a steep and narrowing valley. As a result, a few years of heavy snowfall can increase the length of the glacier significantly, as it did from 1983 to 1999 when it added 1420 meters. Today, it is shorter by more than 3000 meters, compared to the first official measurement in 1893.

We took a hike up the valley on a foggy, drizzly day and got a view of what it looks like today. You are not allowed to go closer without a guide that knows the area.

The next day we drove to Greymouth, where the Grey River spills into the Tasman Sea. A large berm has been build up protecting the city from the river after repeated floods had done huge damage to the city. In 1988, the city was flooded twice and they decided “that’s enough!” and built the flood protection wall along the river. Although the river has risen many times since, the wall has kept the city from damage.

In Greymouth, we turned in the car and jumped on the Trans Alpine Railway for one of the more scenic train rides in NZ. The track goes through the Alps, over Lewis pass, through beautiful farming and vineyard areas, and ends up in Christchurch. This journey, from the west coast to the east coast takes about 6 hours and was a lovely ride.

Below are a couple pics I took from other sites because they are better pics than I got. And we did not see as much snow.

That evening we were in Christchurch, after crossing the entire width of the South Island.

Next up was a day trip to Kaikoura. (Unfortunately, Ray was not feeling well, so he did not make it.) In Maori, Kai means ‘food’ or ‘eat’ and Koura is crayfish, or what we call lobster in the US. This area is famous for the abundance of Koura and it is a major export earner for NZ, with about 90% going to China. Stu, our guide, picked us up in a very nice van and drove us about an hour north to Kaikoura.

We did a short hike and then got on a whale watching boat that headed out from the Kaikoura South Harbor. It did not take long before we spotted a large sperm whale floating on the surface. We had seen many humpback whales before, but this was our first sperm whale. They typically stay on the surface for about 10 minutes and then dive straight down and are gone for about an hour. This one was true to form and after a few minutes, down he went! But I did get a few pics.

We did not see any more whales that day, but we did see three types of dolphins. There was a group of about 50 Dusky Dolphins that hung around for over 30 minutes, with several entertaining us with acrobatics displays.

We also saw a few bottle-nosed dolphins and quite a number of rare Hector’s Dolphins which are very small (max of 1.5 meters) with an unusual rounded dorsal fin.

The next day, neither Ray nor myself were feeling well, so we both stayed in the room while Peggy and Mary visited a number of parks, gardens and interesting buildings in Christchurch. One building of note is the ‘Cardboard Cathedral’. In 2011 there was a major earthquake in Christchurch and many buildings, including the Anglican Cathedral were heavily damaged. While the church tried to fund-raise and rebuild the original cathedral, they decided to do a quick build of something they could use in the mean time. The result is the Cardboard Cathedral which was built fairly quickly and inexpensively. It is an A-frame structure using 90 cardboard tubes, each 2 ft in diameter, for the A-frame.

This provided a building the church could use while they went through a long, complicated, and still on-going process of fund-raising and rebuilding the old cathedral. There is still no end date for when the rebuilt/new cathedral will be usable.

March 12, all too soon, was time to say goodbye to Ray & Mary and they flew home to Bozeman Montana.