I flew to Queenstown, world renound for its beauty... The lake, the mountains, the trees, with red, yellow, green, orange leaves... yes it was stunning... almost too picturesque to be real... perfect, and so, somehow I found it imperfect... perhaps it was the 5 degree weather i found myself in!
I spent the afternoon at a farm, where i watched a sheep shearing, and sheep dog work, and saw deers. While everyone was oohing and ahhing at the male deer, i was taken back to my student days, and remembered a friend of mine who spent her third year exploring the roaring of red deer... isnt it amazing how that is considered part of psychology!??
The next day, I travelled to Milford Sound, fyords. The predicted snow had fallen, so the mountain tops were white, while the remainder glistened silver in the sunshine. The fyords, the rainforest, the mirror lakes... all were stunning, breath taking.. to the point that I find myself speechless.
We took a boat out on the fyords, and at everyaterfall, we saw a rainbow... just like in the tv programme, the care bears that I used to watch when I was supposed to be sleeping of an afternoon so I could stay up late for dinner...
I never knew such beauty existed... I was filled with an awe that, as I said, goes beyond words...
Wednesday, I took a coach up through the southen alps north, through mount cook, up to christchurch. . I have never been on a tour before when I did not know which side of the coach to look out of...
Christchurch, a city devasted by the earthquake that struck a few weeks ago... 20 or so blocks of the CBD are still closed, with no running water or functioning sewers... no,... i did not visit those areas. Although on my road, there were a couple of damaged buildings, and not all shops were open for business...
Not wanting to spend the day in the city, I did a tour out to Akaroa, a small village where I hoped to swim in the pacific ocean, (east coast of nz) with hectare dolphins, the smallest dolphins in the world...
when we got to the docks, all tours were cancelled, due to the 40 knot winds, and the 6m swells.... even I did nit mind missing out on that boat trip!! Plus the town was beautiful... picturesque, without the perfect quality of Queenstown, which made it even more appealing to me...
Someone said to me, accurately, that while in Austraia, you have to go looking for beauty, in new zealand, you turn round the corner, and you find something even more beautiful than where you have just been.
So what did i learn in new zealand?
1) two weeks there is not enough
2) the capital is wellington, not auckland
3) it has 24 recordable earthquakes a day, and yes, in christchurch, i did feel one
4) the moreton bay fig tree is the most beautiful tree i have ever seen
and 5) i want to go back there!
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