Fiordland Ata Whenua: Shadowlands

 

                                   

Having traveled New Zealand from Cape Reinga down to Stewart Island, still we had saved Fiordland, the country’s largest and most celebrated park, (and one of the largest parks in the world in fact) for our last wild encounter. 

Until last week, that is, when we finally headed into the Ata Whenua, or Shadow Land, where the topography is so jagged that the sun only reaches some valley floors at midday, where it rains four or five flights of stairs per year, where the mountains are still growing as fast as your fingernails, where the salty Tasman Sea has flooded far into steep-walled glacial valleys,

where waterfalls plunge like plumb-lines straight and tall as Manhattan skyscrapers, tumbling from sheer cliffs grand enough to 

tower over all the skyscrapers in the world at once . . . and where you can hang out with a colorful, tropical-looking parrot called a Kea, wild in its natural habitat, which happens to be the alpine zone, one afternoon under the icy blue lip of a hanging glacier.                   

Photos

Stay Tuned we about to say farewell to New Zealand and say hello to Southern Africa