Ice Sculptures: Christchurch to Milford Sound; South Island, New Zealand

Awaiting Discovery

When Michelangelo was asked by an apprentice how he created such amazing and intricate sculptures out of inanimate blocks of stone, he responded that the sculptures were not, in fact, his creations at all. He said that the forms of the statues were already there inside the rock, locked within a prison of marble. "Every block of stone has a statue inside it," he said, "and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." This idea seems to  be particularly true here on the South Island of New Zealand. While much of the land here is picturesque and serene, it is only when the top layers have been chiseled away does the exquisite beauty of this place truly reveal itself. Here, however, it is not the skillful hand of a Renaissance master that does the carving but massive rivers of advancing ice, and the medium is not a single block of stone, but enormous mountain ranges, thousands of feet tall, that seem to stretch off into infinity.

We arrived on the South Island via the Interislander Ferry from Wellington. From there we hopped  on a bus down to the city of Christchurch. The trip was delightful. Countless fluffy sheep grazed lazily in the slanted rays of afternoon sun while fields of green grass and golden wheat rippled like soft, velvet waves on the gently rolling hillsides. 

The bus pulled into Christchurch where my friend Nicole and her boyfriend Harry met us and drove us out to stay on their farm. Along the way we passed through the once idyllic city center, which is now a ghost town of crumbling building, closed roads and empty lots. Two earthquakes, in 2010 and 2011, rocked this quaint English-style town to its very core. Most of the old buildings collapsed or were damaged beyond repair and many of the inhabitants have moved away leaving an empty shell of this once beautiful city.

At Nicole's farm it was a completely different story. A few miles from Christchurch, it seemed an oasis of tranquility and calm. Apple and pear trees lined the driveway while behind the house a spectacular English garden boasted more than one hundred different types of roses along with a dazzling array of other flowers and vines. A huge flock of chickens provided dozens of fresh eggs every morning and the main garden provided succulent vegetables and herbs for each meal. There was even a stately peacock strutting around the grounds adding to the whimsical beauty of the place. Molly and I played 'Old McDonald' for a day or so, tending to the hazelnut orchard and collecting eggs from the coop.

After leaving Nicole's we went into town and picked up the camper van which was to be our home for the next few weeks. I jumped in the driver's seat, and had only a little trouble adjusting to the fact that it was on the right-hand side. We drove for a few hours down the east coast of the island before turning west and heading for the mountains.

Lupines by the Lake

Our first encounter with the works of a glacier came in the form of two massive lakes, Tekapu and Pukaki. These lakes are fed by meltwaters from glaciers high in the Southern Alps and, because of that, they have an incredible color. Like Lago 69 in Peru, these lakes are an iridescent, milky blue. The color is caused by the presence of rock flour--- tiny particles of rock that have been ground to a flour-like consistency by the enormous pressure of the glacier and are now suspended in the water. That night we camped by mirror-like Lake McGreggor and watched a glorious full moon rise over the mountains.

The next day it was time to head to the source of these lakes. We drove up towards Mount Cook National Park through a wide glacial valley with its characteristic "U" shape--- a flat bottom and steep sides. (For all you LOTR nuts out there, it served as the sight of the Pelennor battle fields of Minas Tirith and Helms Deep.) On the way we visited the first of many glaciers that we would see in the coming days. At the base of the glacier was a huge lake, milky gray with rock flour, which was full of gaint icebergs that had broken off the main ice floe. The base of the glacier itself actually looks more like a rock quarry than a river of ice. This is because as the glacier moves down the mountains it shaves off huge chunks of rock which then fall on top of it leaving the ice with a blanket of gray rocks. The huge piles of rocks at the end of a glacier are called terminal moraines and when the ice retreats it leaves these rocks behind. Just to give you an idea of how big these terminal moraines can get, the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were created by terminal moraine rocks.

Alpine Memorial

We finally reached Mt. Cook National Park and took a hike up the Hooker Valley to see the glacier of the same name. It was a spectacular hike that brought us over raging rivers and through high alpine meadows. High overhead snow-capped peaks reflected the dazzling sunlight as waterfalls rushed down the sheer rock faces. Towering above everything, Mount Cook, crowned with diamonds of ice, loomed like a distant mountain king surveying his domain. The Maori people call it Aoraki, Cloud Piecer, believing it to be an ancestral god turned to stone. On the way up to the glacier, we passed a memorial to the dozens of people who have died trying to ascend its treacherous slopes.

Mount Cook

After our time in the mountains we headed back for the coast stopping briefly to see the curious Moeraki Boulders. These giant spherical rocks litter the beach outside of town. They were created over millions of years as mud and clay deposits were cemented by calcite around tiny shells and pebbles. Maori legend has it that their giant gods originally reached New Zealand by a canoe from the land across the sea. The canoe foundered and  crashed off shore and the boulders are the remnants of the huge gourds that were used to carry supplies.

From Moeraki we headed south onto the Otago Peninsula just outside the town of Dunedin. The peninsula itself is spectacular with rugged, windswept hills and jagged cliffs plunging into the chilly waters of the southern Pacific Ocean. The landscape is a lot like how I imagine the highlands of Scotland to be and in fact, so many Scots immigrated to this part of the island in the last century that many of the inhabitants roll their "r's" a bit like their ancestors. The peninsula is also home to an enormous amount of wildlife, from seals and sea lions to many endangered species of penguins (Blue-eyed, Yellow-eyed and Fiordland Crested). We spent an afternoon watching the curious-looking tuxedoed birds hop up from the water to their nests in the dunes.

Sandfly Bay is named for the intense winds which blow over it making the sand fly up in all directions

We spent the next few days driving through the pastoral hills of the Catlins on the southern part of the island. One of the most amazing campsites we found (so far) was at Purakaunui Bay where we pulled our van right onto an amazing surf beach surrounded by tall cliffs and fragrant eucalyptus. We hiked to several beautiful waterfalls in the area and even made it to a petrified forest. Millions  of years ago, huge rainstorms washed volcanic mud down from the mountains, covering an ancient forest. The silica in the water quickly replaced the organic material in the trees leaving stone monuments in their place. In addition to seeing actual trees from the Jurassic period, we also got the rare treat of seeing a Yellow-eyed penguin feeding her young. Although regurgitated fish guts does not sound like the best dinner to me, the chicks ate with relish and squawked for more. 

The view from our van door

Lunch!

Our final and most anticipated stop on the southern section of the island was Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park. Incidentally, Milford Sound isn't a sound at all. Sounds are made by water erosion from rivers. Milford is a fjord, it was carved by ice. We began the winding 118 km road up to Milford Sound under the cover of clouds which soon gave way to bright sunshine. This in itself was something of a miracle. Milford Sound has an annual rainfall of 9 meters per year. That's about 30 feet of rain annually, averaging out to almost one inch every day.

That amount of rain has some pretty bizzare effects on the fjord. One of these effects has to do with the composition of the water. Even though it is connected to the Tasman Sea, the top layer of Milford Sound is fresh water. So much rain falls here that it creates a layer of fresh water that floats on top of the denser salt water. The second effect of the rain is on the marine life. The rain water washed into the fjord carries with it an abundance of organic material (leaves, whatnot) which act like a filter for the sunlight. Even though the fjord is an astounding 1000 feet deep, the marine life that lives in the salt water layer below the murky fresh water is fooled into thinking it is much deeper because it is so dark. They are so completely convinced by the murkiness that many of the organisms found in Milford Sound are typically only found thousands of feet down in the deep ocean.

Molly and I took a boat ride out from the town of Milford out to the Tasman Sea and back. It was an incredible experience. The journey took us out past Mitre Peak, the tallest sea cliff in the world, past outcroppings of copper and gold which cannot be mined because this is a protected area and next to huge fault lines which cracked the land in two. And those fault lines are very active. Milford sound gets an average of 3000 earthquakes per year. We saw a pod of dolphins and herds of seals resting on the rocks. The boat pulled up to waterfalls that were three times as high as Niagra Falls. It was unforgettable.

The drive back through Fiordland was amazing. The narrow road twists and turns through dense forests and mirrored lakes. During the last ice age this entire section of the country was covered with thousands of glaciers that gouged and pulverized the landscape into spectacular labyrinth of mountains, valleys and deep fjords. The jagged, ice-carved formations in this part of the world defy my ability to express them in words. Impossibly tall snow-covered cliffs drop thousands of feet to gentle, grassy meadows. Delicate spires of stone rise over gushing waterfalls which cut deep honeycomb chasms into the rock. It is a completely unique and wild environment which, it seems, could exist only in the imagination of a madman or a genius. If the glaciers can be considered artists that sculpted New Zealand, suffice it to say that this is where the ice created its masterpiece.