Way Down Under
Marvin McDaniel of Great Southern Travel tells of his experiences on the company’s biannual adventures in the South Pacific.
By Marvin McDaniel, as told to Katie Pollock
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 Marvin McDaniel makes a trip to the land of koalas every two years. |
The North Island
New Zealand is two islands (the northern island and the southern island). Just driving across the northern island of New Zealand is nothing short of spectacular. The scenery; every color of green that God made is on that island. The north island is pretty spread out, a lot of volcanic mountains on the island. There’s a lot of adventurous activities there, from trout fishing to skiing to black water rafting. And a lot of people don’t know what that is, but black water rafting is where you get in a wet suit and literally slide on tubing down rivers in caves. Agriculture is a big part of New Zealand, and the sheep industry is very large. We visit a sheep farm and get an explanation of the various types of sheep and the different wool coming from those different kinds of sheep. Some are known for their meat. Some sheep are known for the wool and products like that. We also visit some caves that are quite unique, known as glow worm caves. Basically the caves have these insects known as glow worms that are very much like our fireflies, however they attach themselves to the ceiling of the cave. When it’s extremely dark, they will illuminate, and that will cause insects to come near them, and they will gather them in their web.
The South Island
We start [our stay on the southern island] with Dunedin. Dunedin is a town on the very southeastern edge of the southern island. It’s very similar in size, I would say, to Springfield. A lot of people call it the Edinburgh, Scotland of New Zealand, simply because it’s a university town, it’s been around a long time, and it’s built around its local university, University of Otago.Near that town we visited a farmer who literally has penguins that have a live natural habitat on his property. He’s taken this natural bay that opens up to the ocean there, and he’s dug trenches in and around these penguin nests and then covered those trenches with camouflage, so his guests can walk down through the trenches and not disturb the penguins on their nests. The penguin there is one of about 25 different species, and it’s called the yellow-eyed penguin. It stands about 18 inches high as an adult, and they generally have one or two young that they raise each year. So one will go out to the ocean every day and come back that evening, hopefully, if he can get by the seals, and will feed the young. It’s an extremely interesting experience.
Gorges, Fjords and Sounds
Dunedin had a gold rush back in the 1800s, just very much like we did in Alaska and California. And the gold rush was way back in the mountains. To get supplies back there and to get gold out, the government built a train up the Taieri Gorge. And this train, I think, might be one of the most unique in the world. You’ve got the Durango and Silverton train. You’ve got the train up in Skagway, Alaska. You’ve got some unique trains around the world. But the Taieri Gorge Railway is a very neat one. It goes through this gorge, and you take an excursion on it about four hours long, and you can’t fathom where they built this train. One part of it, the very lower part of the gorge, it’s very green. River is rushing wildly. But as you go up the mountain, then there are fewer trees, and it’s more barren, and eagles and hawks and things like that abound. But it’s really spectacular.The next place that we visited in New Zealand, in the southwestern part of the south island, is the Fiordland National Park. And there are several inlets that come in from the Tasman Sea, and those inlets are known as fjords and sounds. And the sound that we visited is called Milford Sound. This sound, from the Tasman Sea, goes into the interior of the south island about 10 miles. And it’s very hard to see if you were sailing a ship up and down the coast of southwestern New Zealand. In the interior of this sound, the mountains literally rise from the water’s edge straight up, and there’s one mountain there called Mitre Peak that goes up 5,551 feet from the water’s edge. All around this sound waterfalls are coming down and falling into the water, and the excursion boat that we take pulls up underneath some of these waterfalls. It is just spectacular. The wildlife is abundant. There are seals, there are dolphins, there are very small pygmy penguins.
Queenstown, New Zealand
Queenstown is another town that we visited in New Zealand, and it’s a mountain town that sits on the edge of a lake, with the mountain peaks surrounding that lake. In the morning, you can get up, and the lake can be very calm, and the reflections of the mountain peaks in the lake are just spectacular. That particular area is not far from where a guy by the name of AJ Hackett started commercial bungee jumping. I’ve done that, but not on this last trip. It’s probably an experience I’ll only do once. I was glad it was over. I wanted to not go about a foot off that bridge. The sensation is just really over in a hurry.Other things in that area of Queenstown are quite spectacular. There are many rivers that just rush down these mountain canyons. There’s one river called the Shotover River, and there are jet boats much like a Sea-Doo except they hold 18 or so people, and they drive these jet boats up and down these rivers and narrowly miss the canyon walls by just inches, and it is a spectacular ride. That area is also where the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed. And the country is just fabulous.
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