OurNewZealandAdventure: Stewart Island

A six day week end!

We had an easy plane ride to Invercargill and a few hours of time to pass before the ferry to Stewart Island (Jim visited a former Palmy radiologist at the hospital while I strolled through the gardens and the museum).


It doesn't look too bad at the wharf.

And then we rode the ferry across Foveaux Strait-no more easy riding. Rocking, rolling, bouncing, slamming-you name it! Even with Dramamine we didn’t feel well. The motion sickness instructions said to keep your eyes on the horizon, but it was darn hard to find that horizon. I held on and concentrated on my breathing and even Jim didn’t think to take pictures until the worst was over. We were told we were probably in three meter waves and forty knot winds, but later found that the winds were probably fifty knots, which would be about fifty-eight mph. I think the company was close to the limit for cancelling the trip and it was well over my limit.


It was bad in the strait

We had a wonderfully warm room with a lovely view of the harbor and were visited by kakas on our balcony. (One doesn’t take a warm room for granted in NZ.) We took three tours, one of the tiny harbor town of Oban, a kiwi spotting tour and a guided nature tour of Ulva Island. All were excellent and with our wool underwear and many layers, we stayed nice and warm.

The pots are used to collect fish, mainly crayfish, blue cod and paua. The people of Oban take only what they need and share with the community.

This 2.1 km ecologically engineered fence on Stewart Island with video and satellite communication encloses more than 400 acres of an ecological preserve of native species of plants and wildlife and is predator free. Ulva Island was predator free in 2010, but some rats were found after that and work is being done to eradicate them from the island.

We saw kiwis on the beach after walking through the bush at night with our torches-so cool. On the water taxi to Ulva Island we saw two blue-eyed penguins swimming, and on the island identified birds by sight and calls, trees, mosses, ferns and even penguin tracks. And I had all I could do to leave behind the beautiful shells and sand on the beach. But seeing that we were in a virgin forest…