New Zealand – South Island – Snap Scan & Stitch

NEW ZEALAND South Island

These photographs, and many more to follow, were part of my AOL slide shows of visits to New Zealand. Look at them in Slideshow, but they do not seem to enlarge well to full screen. I made about 20 shows of our first 2 visits to New Zealand, in 2006 and 2008 and will import more of these shortly. I have now started to add photographs of our 2011 visit. There are many more to come.

I have given talks about various aspects of New Zealand.

*** One of the albums, The West Coast, contains more than 25 images. You can click on ‘View all’ when you have selected an album to see all the images. Sometimes, I will divide it into more manageable albums.

GOLDEN BAY AROUND COLLINWOOD

GOLDEN BAY ABEL TASMAN

GOLDEN BAY FAREWELL SPIT

INLAND 2006 & 2008

INLAND TOWARDS MOUNT COOK

SURAT BAY

WEST COAST

MOERAKI BOULDERS and OAMARU

MILFORD SOUND

AKAROA

AKAROA – THE GIANT’S HOUSE

HOME

NEW ZEALAND NORTH ISLAND

Marc and Belinda live in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand.

Wellington is an ideal location for beginning explorations of the South Island. In 2006 and 2011, we crossed the Cook Strait from Wellington to Picton on the Interislander ferry. In 2008, we flew from Wellington to Queenstown to begin a tour in a motorhome down to Te Anau and the south of the island.

GOLDEN BAY AROUND COLLINGWOOD (20)

May 07, 2012

We spent a week in Collingwood in a luxurious ‘bach’ (NZ holiday home) in Golden Bay in March 2011. It was a wonderful place to be. The weather wasn’t always perfect, but it was often beautiful. There was so much to see and do, and we wished that we had much longer there. I would love to go back. I took so many photographs of the beach below us as well as the other places we visited.

GOLDEN BAY ABEL TASMAN (12)

May 07, 2012

The Abel Tasman National Park is known for the Abel Tasman Coast Track, a long trail winding over beaches and across ridges between Marahau in the south and Wainui in the north. The headland at Separation Point leads into the western side of Golden Bay with beautiful golden beaches. Normally Golden Bay is approached across the Marble Mountain to Takaka.

FAREWELL SPIT (25)

May 07, 2012

Farewell Spit at the top of Golden Bay is a spit of sand dunes bordering the bay. The bay is very shallow inside the spit, and frequently pods of Whales are beached there.

SOUTH ISLAND – INLAND – 2008 and 2006 (25)

August 17, 2012

This album features Central Otago and the area around Mount Cook. I thought that I needed to show some non-coastal areas of New Zealand.

We crossed Central Otago in 2008 from Moeraki with its boulders (another album to come) to Queenstown. On our visit in 2006, we drove through the centre of the south island from Queenstown to Christchurch.

TOWARDS MOUNT COOK (10)

August 17, 2012

We went into the Southern Alps, although we did not go right into Mount Cook village at the end of Lake Pukaki.

SURAT BAY South Island New Zealand 2008 (25)

January 01, 2012

Photographs taken on our tour around the South Island of New Zealand in 2008. I loved Surat Bay because of the wonderful sand patterns.

MOERAKI BOULDERS South Island 2008 (24)

October 04, 2012

We visited Moeraki and the boulders on our 2008 South Island trip. I was fascinated by the boulders which emerge from the cliff and then suffer the ravages of the sea and the weather and, unfortunately, vandalism. Oamaru, jus north of Moeraki, is an unusual town for New Zealand in that it has old and imposing limestone buildings. It is also the home of a colony of Little Blue penguins.

OAMARU South Island 2008 (15)

October 04, 2012

WEST COAST South Island New Zealand 2006 (64)

February 19, 2012

We travelled from Nelson on the north coast of the South Island across to the west coast. There had been an uncharacteristic drought before we arrived but it made up for it when we left Pancake Rocks. It was very disappointing but the rain stopped when we arrived at our ‘bach’ at Hannah’s Clearing, and we ventured onto the beach, in spite of the dire warnings about sandflies. The trip to Jackson Bay the next day was wonderful. It is as far south as you can travel on land down the west coast without climbing over the mountains to Milford Sound.

*** This album contains more than 25 images. You can click on ‘View all’ when you have selected an album to see all the images. Sometime, I will divide it into more manageable albums.

South Island MILFORD SOUND 2006 and 2008 (25)

October 08, 2012

Each time we visited visited Milford Sound the weather was bad, unlike the blue skies shown on the brochure. However the advantage of a lot of rain is that the waterfalls cascade more impressively and the scenery is more dramatic.