Votre Coeur: December 2008

Kiwi Trip - Day 3 More Ultimate Glacier Discovery

0 comments Posted by Mastermind at 8:09 pm

On the left, the rocky hill formed by the glacier many years ago when it pushed the rocks here. You will noticed that the rocky hill is a bit redish in colour and seem to contained iron. While the rocks we were walking on were greyish in colour came from a different source. Haha... think I better stop if not I'll be blogging more and more about Geography instead of Physics. Though at the end of the day, this is physical Geography which in essence is Physics too.

Thorny plants used by the Maoris for tatooing in the past. Ouch...

Here's the paranomic view of the vantage point.

Walking back alone. But what's more interesting is that in the Gondor scene with Minas Tirith, the snow cap mountain background came from here instead of the place we visited in the morning. As for the castle, it is located elsewhere and sadly is not opened for public.

Kiwi Trip - Day 3 Ultimate Glacier Discovery

0 comments Posted by Mastermind at 7:57 pm

The other tour of the day, the glacier tour at Mt Cook area. Aoraki Mt Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand and is home to some of the most interesting stuff I've seen. Besides 'river of rocks' and climbing up what seem to be Mordor, there's a bumpy ride on the 4WD vehicle. Felt like Frodo in his journey when we were climbing up the rocky hill. Here's the other highlights of the tour

From rocks, we get moss, from moss we get soil, from soil we will get plants and trees. The process will take hundreds of years.

From Tasman glacier, we get this piece of ice, formed under pressure of snow, and ended up at the lake due to the global warming. Can see little stones inside the ice.

See the little boat there? This will give us a better idea of the size of the place. Pity that the clouds covered the peaks.

The stitch of Tasman glacier. The grey part is the glacier, the milky white part the lake. It's grey due to the little rocks that piled up after the ice melted. Barely a hundred years ago, the glacier was as high as where I was standing when I took this picture and end up as for as the spot where I stood when I took the previous picture.

Kiwi Trip - Day 3 Lake Pukaki

1 comments Posted by Mastermind at 2:13 pm

After LOTR tour in the morning, it's time for re-exploring of the scenic locations around Twizel with the great weather today. Thought of squeezing in the flight on the same day but given that I have a tour in the afternoon that will only end at about 5pm and that the last scenic flight happens to take place around the same time but at a location about 1 hour away. I knew we have to give the flight a miss.

That's me trying to capture paranomic shots of Lake Pukaki

That's the flight of stairs I ran down (remember I just recovered so am a bit wobbly with my legs at that time)

There's a hydroelectric power generator (There's a lot of hydropower in NZ) behind me. This is the view after generating power.

Lake Pukaki... only part of it.. the building on the left is the information counter

Kiwi Trip - Day 3 Gondor (LOTR)

0 comments Posted by Mastermind at 10:13 pm

Day 3, great day today. If we can measure the amount of fun we have on each day by the number of photos we have taken that day, then day 3 will be more than 30% better than any other days.

First on the agenda for the morning was a personal guide to the actual filming location for what else but the Lord of the Rings movies. We visited Gondor, or where they film it. Gondor is a place featured mainly in the "Return of the King". Can't remember? Go watch the movie again. I have the whole collector's edition DVD with me, just bring some popcorn and soda.

Me doing the Witch King thing.

From the movie in the portable DVD player, you can see Gandalf riding in Gondor with the background exactly as what we see behind.

Real replica swords from the hero (and heroine?)

Paranomic view of Gondor.

Some interesting bits from the guide, who is a local at Twizel.
1.) That the population around the town is not enough for the director to complete his epic battle scene at Gondor, such that the director actually got the New Zealand army to act as Orcs in the movie
2.) That the horses of the riders of Rohan came from different background (some are pets, others are retired race horses) that it took them 3 days to figure out the personality of the horses. You can't break apart lovers or put rivals together in the scene. Plus those race horse are such a show off as they trained to gallop faster than any other horses
3.) That the filming crew strength was a few times greater than the population of Twizel
4.) That Gondor is made up of 3 different locations, Twizel, Mt Cook and Wellington (where they have the 'bigature' castle)
5.) Plus many more...

And this was just a start to a great day of adventure.

Kiwi Trip - Day 2

0 comments Posted by Mastermind at 8:07 pm

Day 2 was a rainy day. With temperature going as low as 0 degrees celsius! No joke, I took a picture of the outdoor thermometer in Twizel using Sucre's handphone so I got proof. Just too lazy to get it out and share it here. Anyway... the rain spoiled most of the day as the scenic flight was cancelled. Was so looking forward to it especially after getting a taste of it from the flight to Christchurch. Not many good photos taken in the rain. Our basic day out was like snap a few shots, wipe our lens and snap a few more shots. Reminds me of another photoshoot in the neighbouring country. It's no joke taking pictures in this cold weather, though its the first time I tried the A700 with my gloves on and it is really easy to operate (except for pinching the lens cap off) due to the generous spacing between buttons on the camera.

On our way to Lake Tekapo, we saw this... black sheeps on the left and white ones on the right. (actually the black ones are cows)

The landmark church at Lake Tekapo. Will never know how beautiful it can be since it was cloudy, rainy and cold when we were there.

Lake Ohau was not part of the itinerary but since we have time to spare as the flight was canceled, we just drop by since we drove around the area.

Our brunch at Lake Tekapo. I really suspect the breakfast I ate caused the problems for me that night. Either that or I have yet to fully recover at that point of time.

Day 2 was the first real road trip. First time driving more than 300km, but luckily got Sucre to share the 'work' with me. The trip from Christchurch to Lake Tekapo and Twizel was quite an eye opener to the beautiful side of New Zealand. Little did we know that the experience will be surpassed by subsequent road trips. So much so that we agree that the best part of our trip was the driving as we relied on the GPS system to bring us from point A to B without knowing what to expect on our way there. And mind you the GPS system brought us to the various scenic route that we didn't knew of from the online driving trip planner.

Neverlost. Indeed, on our first day, it brought us to the Motel via some route that I would never have imagined had I relied on the map. Without the GPS system, I would have made a few extra detours/U-turns to find my way because 1.) the entrance to the Motel can be hidden by the many cars parked at roadside, 2.) there is no right turn into the Motel. With it, we are really Neverlost.

Kiwi Trip - Day 1

0 comments Posted by Mastermind at 10:34 pm

Guess I can consider this to be a backpacking-like trip except that I stay in min 3 stars accommodation instead of bunk bed style hostel. Nice to have all the time under your control, you get like what time should we wake up next morning kind of stuff to think about which is pretty good on a holiday. Rather than being forced to wake up at certain timing for breakfast cause you gotta go to place X by time Y as a tour group. The trip took 13 hours in total with transit at Sydney, which is enough for me to fly to Charles De Gaulle direct but thank goodness the time zone difference is just 5 hours instead.

The flight to Christchurch had a breath-taking view of the southern Alps and here's some photos taken of the beautiful landscape there. Any artifacts you see in the photos are most likely to be due to the dirty plane windows. Plus these 3 shots were heavily photoshop to put back contrast and saturation.

Looks like stuff you see from painting. Really glad that the weather was good at least on arrival so I have a few shots to show. Really pity to miss the sight-seeing plane the next day due to poor weather, otherwise I will have loads more aerial shots of the landscapes there. Good thing I didn't get the 11-18mm SAL lens otherwise it would be sort of wasted.

Christchurch is a pretty small city. Like many places in Europe, the malls are closed on Sundays except for a few touristy shops operated by Japanese. A walk down the streets left us disappointed but at least we manage to find some 24hrs convenience shops (read 7-11) for us to top up some food supplies before we hit off for the road trip. The tall building you see in this picture is probably one of the tallest you can find around Christchurch. Don't expect to find any skyscrapers, perhaps due to the low population density.

Our rental car was a white Toyota Corolla hatchback version with a 1.8L engine and we opt for the GPS system too so there's one less thing to take care off on road trips. With that, we're off for our little adventure in this heavenly place.