New Zealand One more day in South Island

The Maori call New Zealand, Aotearoa which means “The land of the long white cloud”.

New Zealand is located in Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean.

The official languages in New Zealand are English and Maori.The Capital city of New Zealand is Wellington, located on the North Island.

Fiordland, New Zealand, 1.2 million hectares of pristine national heritage park. One of New Zealand’s premier travel destinations, it is home to a myriad of  natural gems, including coastal fiords, majestic Fiordland lakes, Milford Sound, Milford Track, Lakes Manapouri, Te Anau, Monowai, Hauroko and Poteriteri.

We are going from Queenstown to Milford Sound

Lake Gunn, a small lake between Lake Te Anau and Milford Sound, it lies close to the

State Highway 94 (the Milford Sound Road)

The small tramping camp of Cascade Creek lies close to the lake's southern end.

The west branch of the Eglinton River flows through the lake. The lake was named after George Gunn, a run holder, who discovered the lake in 1861

The Eglinton Valley is well known for 'The Avenue of the Disappearing Mountain' and its wonderful views.

The Chasm is a spot along the Cleddau River where the watercourse disappears between a narrow chasm (as the name suggests). However, it's also a nature walk. You get to look down at mostly strangely shaped rocks and potholes resulting from the Cleddau River's forceful flow as it gets channeled into the dark and narrow abyss.

Milford road, Mitre Peak

The Chasm, a rather descriptive name for what this place looks like, is actually a typical karst feature called sinkhole or loosing stream.

It is a result of contact karst, which means karst located at the contact between soluble and insoluble rocks.

Here the Cleddau River crosses an almost invincible border. Underground the type of rock changes, and while the rocks uphill are unsoluble the water is flowing on top of the rocks in its riverbed.

As soon as it reaches the limestone, the water runs through narrow cracks in the rocks, starts to solute the rock along the crack, and form caves.

When the caves become bigger they will start to swallow the complete stream, at least most of the year

This is what happens here. The water is flowing into a cave with a roaring chasm.

Milford road, Mitre Peak

We leave Fiordland going to Christchurch

New Zealand has no native salmon or trout and all the salmonids were originally imported as ova. Although there is a very significant recreational trout fishery in New Zealand often sustained by hatchery output, farming of trout in New Zealand is illegal

Attempts have been made to farm the sockeye and Atlantic species in New Zealand but for various reasons these were unsuccessful such that only Chinook is now farmed.

Only Chinook salmon (also known as "Quinnat" or "King Salmon") are successfully farmed on a significant scale in New Zealand.

This is in contrast to the rest of the world where salmon aquaculture is focused on Atlantic salmon, except for some chinook salmon in Canada and Coho salmon in Chile. "King Salmon" is the name commonly used for chinook by the salmon farming industry and markets.

Omarama is a small township (population 231 at 2006 census) at the junction of State Highways 8 and 83, near the southern end of the Mackenzie Basin, in the Waitaki District, in the historic Province of Otago.

Geraldine is a town in the Canterbury region about 140 km south of Christchurch. Geraldine’s reputation as a home to gifted artists and artisans is growing all the time and many of these talented people, for example Austen Deans and John Badcock, have their work on sale in the town itself or from nearby studios.

Some of the creations come in edible form too – Geraldine’s cheesemaker, chocolatier and the internationally recognised Barker's fruit products all have outlets in the town. Also on display in a local shop is a recreation of the Bayeux Tapestry. It is at approximately half scale.

Christchurch airport

Text : InternetPictures: Sanda Foişoreanu Doina Grigoraş InternetArangement: Sanda Foişoreanu

Sound: Kiri te Kanava Tahi Nei Taro Kino Po Ata Rau (Now Is The Hour)