22/02/08
Hello all, and welcome to another chapter in my ongoing adventures. This day’s story is brought to you by the word Fiord, and not Sound. More on that in a little bit. Essentially, this was another rest day. Not that I necessarily needed it, but simply because I’m in Te Anau, and this is where the only road that heads out to Milford Sound starts and finishes, and I wasn’t going to come all the way to New Zealand without checking out the world famous Milford Sound! As such, I had booked a coach and cruise trip while I was still in Queenstown a few days ago. This was a bit of a gamble, since I didn’t know what the weather would be doing, but things worked out just fine, as you’ll find out if you read on. As per usual, and I’m sure I don’t even need to mention it anymore, you can check out the map I put together for the day, as well as hopefully some pictures that I’ll try to get up on Flickr. Read on, mates!
Well, here I am sitting at a rather high altitude over our great nation. We’ve been airborne for about an hour now, and far below me is no doubt the roiling waters of the great Atlantic Ocean. It always amazes me what clever creatures we humans are. Conquering the skies with our mighty flying birds. I hadn’t intended to actually spend much time blogging on this first leg of our journey to Saudi Arabia, but what can I say? Circumstances have lead to this outcome. What circumstances? Well, mainly the fact that the onboard entertainment system is kaput. Yup, no fun movies to pass the time. Too bad. I was looking forward to watching Tropic Thunder, and probably Hellboy II or Christmas Vacation, that all-time classic holiday movie. I guess I can’t complain though. I’ve got my iPod and I’m rockin’ the Pink Floyd with my sound isolating earphones, so that I don’t have to listen to the myriad of crying babies on this red-eye flight to London. Jody seems rather oblivious beside me, having dozed off even before we left the ground! Good for her, she’ll be well refreshed when we touch down in the great city of London for our 24 hour layover. What? A layover? Weren’t we supposed to fly out Sunday and just stop for an hour and a half? Well, read on to find out what happened. Click here for pictures.
Click here for pictures from the Quebrada de Cafayate. Let me start off by saying that I´ve never really been to any real canyonlands. I´ve not been to the Grand Canyon, or Moab, Death Valley, etc. etc. So I have no way of knowing whether the magnificance that I experienced in the Quebrada de Cafayate is paralelled or not. However, you can rest assured that this humble narrator was duly impressed, and moved beyond words at several points of our canyon tour via bus with a coca-leaf loving local expert guide. Impressed to the point that I have even contemplated changing my plans for next year. Rather than spending 6 months in New Zealand, I strongly thought about instead returning to South America. For one, it would be much less expensive, not to mention there is no shortage of things to do, and would certainly be an enriching cultural experience. That being said, for now, I´ll stick with the plan. I have a (hopefully) long life ahead of me, and can certainly return another time. On with the tour.
As I crested yet another little rise, feeling the many kilometers in my entire body, I could utter only a single word […]
