Here in mid June I am in Greece assisting one of our partners on a project involving our software.
I arrived Sunday evening and started working Monday morning with the partner. One of my colleagues Karsten is also here and last night we went to this fantastic restaurant called moorings.
It is the most fantae on in icy conditions.
We managed to rent a set of chains in Te Anau because we had heard rumours about chains being mandatory.
If you go to New Zealand during the winter, then make sure you have a set of chains for the car.
How many postcards have you seen from Milford Sound, where there was snow on top of the mountains?
It is beautiful, but nothing compared to the Mount Cook area.
The sun rising in the Milford Sound area.
Glaciers . . .
Most of the glaciers we went to were located on the main range.
We had to drive inland when we were heading south on the west coast because the Westland was too rough and wild to drive through.
Here on the right is the Tasman glacier near Mt Cook village. It is 35 km long - a hundred years ago it was 85km long. The ice is 600m thick and used to be 1,300m thick.
Where the glacier ends at the water on the photo, the ice is more than 200m thick.
Both the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers are located on the west coast.
On the left is The Fox Glacier.
It is so huge that if you built a house at the end where the ice begins (or ends since it is a glacier), you would not be able to see it on this picture.
The pile of ice behind me are 3 to 4 times bigger than the size of a house.
I am standing about half a kilometre from the glacier.
At the Franz Josef glacier, people have been feeding the keas. The kea is the only alpine parrot in the world.
This means the keas associate every man-made thing with something edible.
They are therefore making the attempt to eat the cars. You can see the keas on the roof of our campervan.
It is a very weird bird. They can survive in extreme conditions with freezing temperatures and snow.
Mount Cook . . .On the way back to Christchurch, we went to Mt Cook.
Here is Mt Cook as seen from the west coast.
I achieved my goal to climb it in January 2001! You can see the photos from this trip.
Take a look at the colours. The photos were taken at Lindes Pass, just north of Mount Cook.
There was no sound up there. You could not hear the wind or any birds. The only sound you could hear was yourself breathing.
Lance praying towards Mecca???
No just Lance in a weird posture taking a video of Mt Cook.
One of my favorite photos.
"The man and his mountain". Kerenyaga.
Here is Mt Cook in the background (almost 4,000 meters). I am so glad that I had the opportunity to go back to NZ and actually climb on Mt Cook!
Farewell Dinner . . .From Milford Sound, back to Queenstown, we then drove back to Christchurch via the east coast. We saw some pretty spectacular sunrises along the way.
During our last night in New Zealand, we went to a restaurant called "The Sign of the Takahe". We had our farewell dinner at Christchurch before returning to Sydney.
It is an old castle/house built in the same style as the old English castles. The atmosphere and food is excellent.
This is the place to bring a date.
Someone was playing quiet piano music in the hall.
The photo is taken with a long exposure because I wanted to capture the atmosphere with the woman playing the piano in these old surroundings.
Created: Jan 2000 Last Updated: 19 Sept 2001