West Coast is the Best Coast

(Pictured: Me next to the Skyline Restaurant atop a 2000 ft mountain that overlooks Queenstown)

Yes, this is even true in New Zealand. Perhaps arguable in Australia however...

The west Coast of NZ is surprisingly different from the east coast. The first many days of our trip really didn't have any landscapes that don't exist in California or Oregon. The west coast is a different story. There are massive and expansive forests perched precariously along the steepest solid granite mountain ranges you can imagine. Much of this area is temperate rainforest that gets 6-9 meters (20-30 feet) of rain per year - often a meter or more in one day! The landscape can change dramatically with one day of heavy rain by flooding areas, creating waterfalls, and raising rivers and lakes to levels that make them unrecognizable. It's pretty incredible. Just driving up to Milford was probably the best part of our trip so far. It's just really amazing scenery. Too bad my photography skills are not really good enough for me to take the caliber of pictures that this area deserves.

Our Milford Sound boat cruise was really nice and neither of us even got sea sick, which is amazing in itself. The scenery was awesome, blah, blah, blah, now on to the coolest part. We saw dolphins!! Our guide pointed them out as our boat approached, then they casually rode in front of our boat for like 10 minutes, just like in the movies! It was really cool, dolphins are awesome. That's the closest I think I've ever been to them - they're bigger than I thought they would be. We could see them (there were three of them) swimming sideways under the water, weaving all around, and jumping out of the water about 6 feet away from us. It was so cool. We also passed some seals perched on a rock and later that night had a few encounters with a Kea bird, which is a fairly large native parrot-type bird that has a bit of a funny personality (birdality?). I'm glad we've met some of the "natives", the animals here are fun.

We were in Queenstown yesterday, which is a very cool place as well. It's like the extreme sports capital of NZ, which we're not really into, but it makes for a nice touristy town. Lots of places to stay and eat, quaint downtown, and the whole town is nestled in the mountains next to a large lake. Very nice. And it was about 30 degrees (Celsius - uh, 86 degrees F?) the day we were there, which was as unusual as it was pleasant. We rode a gnarly gondola up this huge mountain adjacent to the town to see the tourist-trap venue at the top which featured: overly expensive buffet restaurant with a killer view, bungee jumping, and two luge tracks which are like little unmotorized go-carts that you ride down a concrete track. The whole experience was very fun and even worth the ridiculous cost.

Today we're in Wanaka, a tiny town just north of Queenstown. I guess in NZ terms, this would probably be a city since they have like 3500 residents. There seems to be a hierarchy of city sizes in NZ that is a bit different than I'm used to: village 0-200 people, town 200-1000 people, small city 1000-3000 people, city 3000-50,000, huge raging metropolis over 50,000. Of course this is approximate but that's mostly because I made it all up. Still, so many towns we pass are little more than a main drag with a few buildings. Imagine Nevada but green, without all the hicks, and not so crappy and run down. Ok, that's not easy to imagine, but try.

And yes, we do notice the different accent they have here, as opposed to Aussies (in response to Monique's comment). We mock them constantly (sorry Marc) because it's funny and I'm pretty sure it's required. Some of them are very hard to understand and mockery is our only defense.

Today and yesterday have been sort of relaxing: not much driving, easy schedules, less rugged atmosphere and activities. Tomorrow we head to the glaciers (Fox and Franz Joseph) which had better be awesome.