Exactly a year ago I was a place in New Zealand I have never been, despite this being a relatively smallish three(-ish) islands, and me living here for 60 (-ish) years.
I will call it Deepest Darkest New Zealand, even 'tho' wet and wild Fiordland at the Southwestern part of NZ is probably a little deeper and darker. (Here was re-discovered the amazing Takahe, the very rare, thought-to-be-extinct, stumpy-legged, flightless, fat, evolved version of the common blue swamphen which is seen throughout Asia.)
Anyway, Arthur's Pass is one of the four main passes through the backbone of mountains that run up the South Island. There's not much at Arthur's except a cafe or two and a cluster of small houses, a conservation information centre, and a petrol station. Roy and I were lucky enough to be offered the use of a house belonging to my sister-in-law, and that's where we were, exactly a year ago, fossicking in the dripping beech forest and, a little further up the road, in the pristine alpine gardens, while almost all the populated part of New Zealand sweltered in summer droughts and, sadly, haze from the Australian bushfires...
Imagine moss everywhere, slugs, spiders, harvestmen, centipedes, beetles, moths, lichens, fungi ... A cornucopia of things of great interest to my travelling companion Swedish photographer friend Roy, and I.
We had only about a week to go before he had to fly out (just beating Covid border closures) back to Sweden, the two of us having had from mid November - 3 months straight - travelling and bug-hunting. all over New Zealand from top to almost the bottom. Marvellous! Pull up a chair to this blog, as over the next while I'll retrace our steps...
I shall look fiordward to it. I enjoyed Fiordlaand - especially going down the Milford Sound. Okay that touristy but one can see why and it's all relative - it was very quiet when I was there. I got rather confused though because I couldn't see a link between Fiordland and Arthur's Pass over which I've been several times when going between the Hokitika area and Christchurch. Presumably I will catch up when I get my brain in gear at the next post.
ReplyDeleteFiordland was a diversion - a competitor for deepest darkest. It is lovely. But we didn't quite get there. It's still on my bucket list.
DeleteIt looks like the rainforests in the Oregon USA Coast Range.
ReplyDeleteI would love to visit that part of the world Snowbrush!
DeleteLet me know if you do. Oregon is an interesting state, what with rainforests on the coast, and the Great Basin Desert and the High Desert occupying much of the state on the east, plus the Coast Range and the Cascades--some of the latter reach over 10,000 feet. Like I, most of its people live in the 50x120 mile Willamette Valley, named after the river that runs through it.
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