Stewart Islands and a teeny bit of the Caitlins

Hey all. I'm in Dunedin now, the first proper city I've been in since Christchurch three weeks ago. The last few days were spent on Stewart Island.

Tuesday morning I caught a plane to Stewart Island. Fun 20 minute ride with just two passengers and the pilot. The winds were pretty strong and we had quite a few bumps on our journey. After hitting my head on the ceiling it finally dawned on me why seat belts should be worn snug. Our approach to the airstrip felt pretty hairy, at one point we rolled what felt like 30 degrees. Not a fun thing to be doing as your heading down towards land. Here are a couple pictures from the trip over.

Good view of the action

Some serious off shore winds

That doesn't look to promising

Half-moon Bay and the town of Oban. The only town on Stewart Island.

Stewart Island is pretty big for how few people live there. I think most of them earn their living through tourism or the sea. There are three big tramping circuits, but my knee's been bothering me since Kepler so I stuck to the local tracks to see if I could see any of the world famous birds that live here. Here are a few pictures from that little sojourn..

More lush foliage

I think that's a Tui. They make some very strange noises. http://www.tui.co.nz/index.asp

Ran into more of the fern trees but these ones were too big to be a concern. It's really the smaller ones you have to worry about.

Leaves on a log

Something or other bay

I did run into a little trouble with a vine but using my trusty leatherman, I chopped my way to freedom.

Looking into Half-moon Bay

Wednesday was a do-absolutely-nothing day. It rained all day long and was dreary and grey. The wind had almost completely let up, but the quality of the day brought back memories of wet winters in Washington. Some people are ok with it, but not so much with me. Especially when it's a little cold as well. I did manage to meet a few people at the pub, so it wasn't a big loss. And an Israeli, Tom, and I booked a trip to go fishing Thursday morning so we had something to look forward to.

Yesterday, Thursday, was probably the saviour of my Stewart Island stay. The sun came out and we had patchy blue skies. Still patchy, but so much better than the day before it was as good as being perfectly clear. We caught our fishing chart around 9, just three of us and the skipper, John Lesker. Pretty cool. We started off with tea or coffee and set out for the deep sea (ok, we pretty much stuck right around the island coast.) Fishing has never been easier. It turns out, Blue Cod love Blue Cod.

http://www.fishnz.co.nz/species.cfm?cat=Saltwater&fish=Blue%20cod We used hand lines with a few weights and three hooks baited with ABC fish. I'm not sure how many total fish we caught, but we had enough for the four of us on the boat to have a big lunch and enough left over that Tom and I gorged ourselves at dinner last night. Pretty sweet. Tom also did a little snorkeling and caught a few Paua, a type of Abalone. http://www.oceanshellnz.com/shell_paua.asp I've never had it before and it looked pretty nasty before it was cooked, but it was tasty and I'm not usually fond of stuff that lives in shells. It sells for about$60/pound back home, pricey.

We caught a return flight back to Invercargill that afternoon. The plane was almost full, but the ride was a lot smoother. Here are some pictures from the fishing and the plane ride back.

Our mighty ship!

We saw quite a few Albatross. These ones had wingspans of at least 6 or 8 feet. I guess there's a colony near Dunedin and some of the birds have wingspans up to 16 feet! http://www.albatross.org.nz/

More Albatross with a regular seagull

Getting Fresh with my Fresh Fish(or maybe blowing on it. It doesn't really look like much of a kiss does it?)

The trophy shot. I could have probably had 10 of these pictures through the couple of hours we fished.

mmm..lunch

Land ho!

The nice wharf at Ulva Island (a bird sanctuary, http://www.doc.govt.nz/Conservation/Showcase-Areas/Ulva-Island-Open-Sanctuary.asp) where we had lunch and Tom caught the Paua.

A weka snags a piece of fish from my hand

Lunch, ship style.

Paua love

Paua out of the shell. The Paua shells are really beautiful. You can see the iridescent inside of the shell, the outside is the same after polishing.

Our ticket off the island and Tom doing something to it.

View of the "airport" in the back ground. The control tower consisted of the van that brought passengers to and from the airstrip. I guess they also land these types of planes on the other side of the island.

The sunshine and clouds created some outstanding views.

Touchdown.

And this morning I caught a ride with some Germans from Invercargill to Dunedin. We drove the "south scenic route" through the Caitlins. Pretty nice scenery but we didn't really stop off anywhere. I did get a couple of pictures...

Got slowed down by a herd of sheep on the road.

Tuatui Beach (I think that's the name). It definitely looked like some of the outside stuff was surfable.

More livestock on the road. This time cattle.

A view of the Caitlins from the car window

Tuiara River Mouth, just outside Dunedin

Peace homies....

Oh yeah, I almost forget. I finished War and Peace earlier this week. It only took me 5 weeks but I did it. Whew. Now I can really start my trip.

Double Peace.....