Rosie and Tony’s Southern New Zealand Adventure. Part 6

A cold morning in the Lindis Pass

This morning like every other morning, arrived right on time.
Also once again the sky was cloudless and the temperature freezing cold.

Today Rosie had her sights set on spending the night in the car somewhere on the road out to Milford Sound. Who was I, not to grant her, her wishes so we packed the car in the gathering light.The thermos flasks got charged with coffee and we bid farewell to our cosy warm room, jumped into the car and off we went.

Click on the images if you want to see them at full size

Rosie and Tony’s Southern New Zealand Adventure. Part 5

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Lake Pukaki – Lindis Pass

The main purpose of this trip was to share with Rosie some of my favourite spots that I’ve enjoyed over my years on the road.
Secondly having spent a great deal of the last decade and a half traveling around the South Island with a camera, the trip was also a kind of farewell to my beloved New Zealand as I was about to move to Northern Ireland to start a new life with Rosie.

Rosie and Tony’s Southern New Zealand Adventure. Part 4.

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Lake Alexandrina – Aoraki /Mount Cook

Our day started much like the previous one with Rosie and myself being greeted by an inky black sky filled with millions of brilliant sparkling stars and feet numbing, freezing cold temperatures.The plan for today was to head up to Aoraki /Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain.
Rising 3,724 metres or 12,218 feet above sea level, Aoraki dominates the Southern Alps which in turn forms the backbone of the South Island of New Zealand.I have to admit that in all the years I have been travelling around the South Island of New Zealand with a camera I have only visited Aoraki twice and both times they were basically drive by shootings.
But before we headed for the mountain we still had some unfinished business to take care of first. Last night we made the decision to revisit the same vantage point overlooking Lake Alexandrina to watch the new day being born.

Rosie and Tony’s Southern New Zealand Adventure. Part 3

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Mackenzie Magic

Part three of our Southern Adventure dawned with the sun rising into a calm, cloudless sky, but we had no time to enjoy or admire it.
I was super excited to be on the road to our next destination because I knew Rosie had never experienced anything like South Canterbury’s, Mackenzie country. So we didn’t stop to take photos as we headed south from Kaikōura to Tekapo.
Along the way it became clear to us that the wind was picking up and the car was starting to get a good buffering. By the time we arrived in Tekapo the wind had intensified into a howling gale.
However, the wind did not deter us and our first photography location was a large wind swept paddock just past Mount John, on Godley Peaks road.
I felt that this would be a great introduction where Rosie could get a feel for the scale of the landscape she was going to be photographing over the next few days. I was not wrong.

The Little terns of Baltray part 1

The Manawatu estuary at Foxton beach is an amazing place for sighting and photographing rare birds. It is especially so during the autumn and winter months when many birds are passing along the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand.

Most years I was lucky enough to be blessed by a visit from at least one Little tern and it was always a thrill to zoom up to Foxton to photograph these awesome wee birds. My one disappointment however was that they were always dressed in their tuxedos,  “strictly black and white” and not in their breeding colours which includes a colourful bill. I knew I had no real chance of photographing these amazing wee terns in their breeding colours as they don’t breed in New Zealand.

But my luck was about to change.