Lake Tasman and the surrounding mountains at sunset, near Mount Cook on the South Island of New Zealand. The water really is this crazy light blue color, from all the fine rock dust created by the glaciers. Trey Ratcliff taught me that these spaceship-looking clouds are known as lenticular clouds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_cloud).
The Tongariga Alpine Crossing has been ranked by various sources as “the world’s best one day hike”. Wherever you put it on the list, it’s spectacular. You climb up the edge of Mount Tongariro (aka, Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings), climb up and down a beautiful mountain view to a series of emerald lakes – and, if you could go beyond the “flying volcanic rock” area right now, past Mount Ngauruhoe (aka, Mordor). The climb didn’t feel dangerous, per se, but it was definitely challenging with a lot of loose rock on the steepest parts of the climb. I slipped several times, fell once, and took forever trying to setup my tripod so that I wouldn’t lose my camera down the mountain. So you can imagine my shock (horror!) on my descent when I passed a guy bringing his 1 year old baby up the mountain with him. Not in some kind of backpack, but under his arm like a football! I don’t think he’ll be winning the “parent of the year” award anytime soon.
There are single lane bridges ALL OVER the South Island of New Zealand. When I came across this one under repair, I immediately pulled over to get a photo. I had to wait for a line of cars to get on the bridge, run out quickly, setup my tripod, and shoot and clear the bridge before the reverse traffic came back. It took a few tries before I got the composition right, given the frantic pace. When I got off the bridge, a car full of construction works was rolling onto the road, spotted me, and pulled up alongside me. One of the workers as (in a voice clearly meant to intimidate) if I was working for “the paper”. I have no idea whether they’ve had problems with a reporter or if they were up to something questionable, but the whole situation seemed a bit dodgy. Good thing I’d already crossed this bridge.
My friend Bob and I rented a campervan for a week to drive around and photograph the North Island of New Zealand. We received a free upgrade to a monster RV that sleeps 6, has a bathroom, TV, oven, microwave, stove, … It was huge. We needed a 3.5m clearance to go under anything. And, we were driving on the “wrong” side of the road. So naturally, the first thing we did was drive through rush hour Auckland traffic and up a tight hillside road to take this photo of Auckland.
