Nice photos as they are I feel that both of the last two days’, being taken in the evening, haven’t captured the brilliant light of this place – particularly as it is having unusually bright, warm and settled weather at the moment (apparently their whole summer has been good). This was taken on the second day of my walk round the Rakiura Track, a 25-mile yomp through, well, rather a lot of forest actually, but this moment the light did open up.
This is pretty much how I imagined New Zealand was going to look. I had to walk several miles north of Oban to find it, on the Rakiura Track (see my post here, on my other blog), but here it is, on a spectacularly beautiful evening.
First night on Stewart Island: not only the most southerly place I have been, but pretty much the most southerly place one can go. Only the very bottom of South America, the Falkland Islands (or Malvinas), and Antarctica are further south than here.
Evening entertainment in Oban, the only settlement on Stewart Island, consists either of going to the one pub, or hanging out here on the dock waiting for the penguins to turn up. We did see one. But as is often the case, it turned out more productive to photograph the crowd and not what the crowd was waiting for. (Incidentally, having got to know her a little tonight, it turns out the woman to second right here is a highly accomplished photographer in her own right, far better than me – see her blog here.)
Being 42 