I am taking you on a three week journey across New Zealand from Queenstown down at the bottom of the south island to Auckland in the north via the west coast. Fall colors are on full display around Queenstown and the surrounding hills. I watched a beautiful sunrise as we descended though the clouds to enjoy my first walk along the shores of lake Wakatipu.
After a short helicopter ride you can walk around on Franz Josef glacier. It’s a little slippery and you need to wear crampons on your boots but it’s spectacular. This mass of ice can move up to 5 meters per day in places. While I was walking around up here massive junks of ice were braking of the face and came thundering down in front of me. This image gives you a sense of scale of the shinny blue ice.
The Coromandel Peninsula on the North Island of New Zealand extends 85 kilometres north from the western end of the Bay of Plenty. There were only a few days in my three week trip around NZ that I did not get out of bed before sunrise. This was one of them and I took this composite image of Cathedral Cove in the mid day sun. There was a group of photography students who came down from some university in Auckland and they were staying in my campground. I had a little chat with them the night before while eating fish and chips. They told me how they were getting up at five to come down to this very spot for the good morning light. Priorities, right?