Friday, April 21, 2006

Look Kids, Big Waterfall

Tonight is our first and only night on the Fiordland Navigator, a $5 million dollar, flat-hulled cruising vessel built for the express purpose of toting tourists around the fiords. There's about 70 of us on board, all of whom enjoy gawking at the mystical canyons and towering waterfalls.

The Milford and Doubtful Sounds were carved through glaciers. Large chasams of granite slopes covered in vegetation hanging precoriously to the hard rock walls. The ferns and beech trees only survive by clinging to each other, as there is zero top soil to hang onto. Every so often, there is a tree avalanche where a whole slope of them give way and collapse into the fiord - dubbed a treevalanche.

We have been puttering along the sounds for most of the day, looking at different inlets of the misty covered passages. This is one of the wettest places on earth, and the past few days certainly didn't disappoint. If it wasn't raining, it was about to. This did have its advantages, however, as constant percipitation brought endless waterfalls. We must have seen ten thousand thus far.

In proper cruising fashion, the buffets were enormous. Peggy and I shared a table with three diminutive Japanese girls who had been travelling around NZ for the past few months. They had been 'thin slicing' meals for the past few days, saving up for this encounter. We watched them pile up huge plates of food - lamb, beef, chicken, pasta, coleslaw - take it back to our table and then proceed to photograph their plate before devouring their assembly. They then went back for seconds, followed by the desert plate. It was truly impressive to watch, we were surprised they didn't burst after eating twice their own body weight.

There were some informative nature talks on board as well, we learned about the flightless birds in EnZed and the scourge of rats, possums and ferrets that have killed off vast numbers of native icons such as the Kiwi. The guide was quoted as saying there are over 70 million possums (or squash'ems, given that they're common roadkill candidates) ravaging New Zealand. We'll try to squash a couple as we complete the journey. All in all, though, the critter count has been low. We saw dolphins today, but the penguins have been adjunct, much to Peggy's dismay. Many of the native birds in this part of the world lived without any natural predators for many millenia, evolving to lose their ability fly and residing mainly upon the forest canopy floor. The Brits brought over a bunch of the aforementioned nasties on their boats, who have since decimated the population of cute feathered animals.

posted by ncawthon at 7:18 PM