9.8 inches of rain in 24 hours

Welcome to this special post. I am inserting this one into the series I've been doing of the sights across the South Island of New Zealand because I want to show it to you all while it is still current. Our local news is full of stories of the flooding that took many areas of Auckland by surprise.  I'll get back to my South Island series next week.

We were very fortunate here at our village.  We are situated well above the Opanuku Stream and although the pictures I'll show you here are startling, our village, for the most part, stayed dry.  

I took this first picture a few days ago.  It was the day before the rain started.  I took it to document a higher than normal high tide.

I was standing on the bridge over the Opanuku Stream for this picture. The bridge is about 100 meters from the gate of our retirement village. 

The white building on the top left is our local Pack N Save Supermarket. Notice also the pipe that runs across the stream. That is unfortunately very ugly. It will serve one function though in my next pictures. It will show how high the water was during the storm. 

When the rain started, it started hard.  Notice that there seems to be a minor geyser to the right of the gate controls at the entrance to the village.  The water pressure in the storm water pipes has blown the manhole cover off.   

This is a close up of that area. It also appear that the curbing is under water.  

The rain continued pretty much all day.  It'd take a breather now and then, possibly trying to lull us into believing that it was over, but would then redouble it's efforts.  

At about 7 p.m., Jeanne wondered what the Stream might look like.  I was curious as well.  I donned my raincoat and grabbed my big umbrella as well, so that I could keep my camera dry while I took pictures.  

This was the scene on the bridge.  My umbrella shows at the top of some of these next pictures.  It was not raining very hard at this time, but I don't take chances with my camera. 

You might want to scroll back up for just a moment before you go on.  Look again at what the Opanuku normally looks like. The next photo is startling.  

Look how close to the supermarket the water level is.  And note that the pipe across the stream is gone, completely submerged by the water.  I was slightly uncomfortable watching this. A still picture does not show the speed of the water passing under me.  I should have taken a video I suppose, but I was hurrying to get as many pictures as I could before the rain and winds kicked in again in earnest.  

The little red roof you see on the right is the top of the historic sawmill waterwheel reconstruction.  The next picture shows you what that looks like when the water level in the Opanuku is at its normal low levels.  

 

I took this picture showing the railing of the bridge and facing the drive down to the underground parking for the supermarket. The water is very close to the top of the bridge. 

In this next picture, I have crossed the bridge and am facing the parking lot of the West Wave swimming pools.  West Wave is to the right.  

I would normally go down the three steps you see, turn left, and follow the boardwalk down under the bridge and along the shore of the Stream.  It's very scenic. Today, the water level is almost ready to start spreading into the parking lot.  

After getting these shots of the stream by the bridge, I worried how our vegetable gardens were doing.  Jeanne, and many others, work daily to provide veggies, and flowers, to the residents of our village.  It would be a shame if our gardens were impacted.  

I therefore came up to a vantage point above the gardens and saw that all was well.  

In this shot, you can see that the water level, and this is at the height of the flood, is still well below the gardens.  

I took the following pictures about 12 hours after those I've just shared.  The storm is over. The ugly pipe has survived.  So has the waterwheel house.  

When I returned to the West Wave parking lot, I was pleased to see that the boardwalk seemed to still be okay, although I don't intend to walk on the lower portions until after they are checked out.  They may have been undermined by the currents.  

This bench is along the parking lot at West Wave. I'm looking toward the Stream here, and look, there is debris on the bench. Unbelievable.  

The clean up crews have their work cut out for them.

I walked over to Pack N Save and saw this guy pumping out the last of the water from the parking lot under the store.  

The news around Auckland after the storm shows the extensive damage that was done in some areas.  The crews are already on the job.  

We've talked to Allie and learned that when she noticed that the storm drain near her house was getting blocked up with debris and the water around it was backing up, she went out in the storm and cleared the grate, allowing the water to flow again. I think that many people probably did their share to help during the emergency.  

Next week, as I said at the beginning of this post, I hope to return to documenting our South Island tour.  See you then.   -djf

Queenstown

I'm going to start today's post by telling you about something that Jeanne just shared with me. The moon today is closer to us than it has been for a very long time.  This is the site that Jeanne sent me.

https://earthsky.org/space/closest-new-moon-since-the-middle-ages-1337-years/

I had also learned from a YouTube video, that Saturn and Venus would appear very close to one another last night, in our western sky just after sundown.  I was planning to take pictures, hoping to get one at high magnification, with both planets visible, similar to the one I took of our Moon and Jupiter, with four of its moons also visible.  

Unfortunately, our cloud cover was almost 100% at that time and I got nothing at all. I'll watch again tonight but since the planets move constantly relative to one another, Saturn and Venus will certainly appear farther apart and my chance for a really close-up, dual photo will have been missed.  Oh well,  I'll keep watching and waiting for my next opportunity, but you may have a chance to see them yet.  Take a look.    

Now, back to pictures from the South Island of New Zealand. We have just arrived in Queenstown.  

This is just outside town.

Our hotel

The view to the left of our balcony.

The view looking straight out from our balcony. 

To the right.  

A giant sequoia that was planted in 1874 grows in downtown Queenstown.  

This picture didn't turn out so well.  The sign says that this is a pounamu stone. It's also called greenstone or New Zealand jade.  

Toward the center of town

Queenstown is a very touristy sort of place.  One of the attractions is this cable car ride.  Unfortunately, building it necessitated cutting a very unsightly gash through the trees of this mountain.  We didn't take the ride.  

It's very overcast today, so all my pictures lack a certain liveliness that the sun would have provided.  Still, I liked this place a lot and sat for a while, watching the crowds pass by and shop in the dozens of trendy little shops that circled this square. (and the rest of the town)  

Touristy towns can be fun, but they can also be a bit tiresome.  We were planning that I would walk over and buy a takeaway lunch at the 'famous' Fergburger place several blocks away and return to eat it at our leisure.  However, I was advised by some members of our tour group that I happened to meet who were just coming from Fergburger, that the wait time to get into the place was already 1/2 an hour.  I wasn't willing to invest that kind of time into buying lunch, however exciting the hype surrounding this local delicacy, and popped into a nearby KFC instead.  

To us, the main attraction of the town were the mountains that surrounded it.  We sat spellbound on our balcony, sometimes with a refreshing beverage, and watched always changing vistas as the clouds came and went.  I won't show you many photos here. but it was enthralling, take my word for it, especially after a couple of beverages. 

We used our time in Queenstown to rest up a bit.  There is lots more coming.   -djf

And, for those of you who might wonder what constitutes a Fergburger, I offer you this link.

https://fergburger.com/

A surprise ride back in time.

 

According to our itinerary, we were due to visit a sheep station (ranch) today on our way to Queenstown.  We didn't make it though.  Apparently, the place has recently changed ownership and the new owner's wife chose not to host bus tours.  

Our leaders took the news in stride.  Instead, we found ourselves doing something completely different. 

I thought we were merely pulling over to make a pitstop, so to speak, but instead, we found ourselves on a journey into the past.  Take a look.

Hey, look, it's an antique steam engine on display.  

I hadn't realized yet, (duh) that we were going to go for a ride.  I was simply walking around it taking pictures.  

Hey, there's Jeanne aboard the train.  This isn't just a photo-op, this is a ride!  I had better get aboard too.  

I made it, and we were off just moments later.  

  Jeanne is up ahead signaling to me that she has found some empty seats.  

Everything is original.   

We're up close to the engine and looking forward in this shot.  

Let's go for a walk...

We're at the end of the line turn around point.  Oh boy, there are souvenirs inside.   

Coffee tastes twice as good out of such a mug.  

It backed up onto this siding.  We'll begin our return trip soon.  

Zooming into the distant peaks just before we returned to our starting point.  

Our ride on the Kingston Flyer, there and back, took about two hours.  It was a delightful surprise.  Besides souvenirs at the station turn around, there were snacks and coffee and restrooms.  What more could travelers want?  

And we didn't have to off-load horses as they used to do to continue our journey, our bus was waiting to take us the rest of the way to Queenstown.  

See you next week.   -djf

The Cave of Thunder

We're back to exploring the South Island of New Zealand with this post.  

Take a look at the map.  About a third of the way up the map on the right side, you'll see Manapouri.  It was there that we left the ferry that had taken us down the length of the lake after our overnight cruise on Doubtful Sound. We boarded our tour bus and rode north to Te Anau where our next adventure awaited.  

There is a blue dotted line extending north up the lake from Te Anau. That marks the course to the glow worm cave that we would explore.  

I don't have many pictures of our spelunking.  Cameras were not allowed in the cave.  I took a few before we entered and to tell the truth, I would have found it difficult to keep up with the group and take photos besides.  Then, there was the dripping water from high above us, and spray from the rapids and waterfalls next to us.  That wouldn't have been good for the camera. 

I found this to be a physically challenging experience.  Yes, we had to climb quite a few stairs, but the flights of steps were not long and there were handrails on both sides. That wasn't the issue.  

The issue for me was the sound.  I'll tell you about that in a minute. 

This sign greeted us as we left the boat. 

This next picture shows you a cut-away map of the section of cave we climbed through. We entered from the lower right side. 

This is a section of forest we hiked through on our way to the entrance. 

The trail suddenly drops between the rocks and becomes very narrow. 

My excitement begins to mount.  About here I began to feel the cold air and underground smell that was being blown out of the cave mouth. 

I love caves so the air and smell and wind felt welcoming to me. Some of you reading this I know feel very differently. 

There, just to the right of the man in front, is the darkness.  

I have now been in several glow worm caves. They generally have water flowing through them, but this one impressed me as soon as we were inside with the thunder of some unseen falls further in.  

And it's true that I have recently started wearing hearing aids.  I wondered right away if I should reach up and turn my 'bionics' down a few notches.  However, I soon realized that there was something different about the quality of sound in this cave and turning my aids down wasn't going to change that.  

The walkway we were on twisted and turned. There were two places where we had to bend over, and I mean to just over my waist height, to fit under the low ceiling.  The river was to our right and close enough that occasional splashed droplets could be felt.   

As the cut-away map shows, we steadily climbed and as we did the thunder increased.  I understood that we were in a narrow passageway through solid rock and the pressure waves of the crashing water from a waterfall up ahead had become more than just sound that registered in our ears.  

I could feel it.  It was like being very lightly pummeled all over.  I actually found it tiring.  If you've ever stood in front of giant speakers (when you were young) at a concert and felt the vibrations from them, you'll have an idea of what I mean.   

Finally, we stood before the waterfall itself and the full roar almost overloaded my senses.  

We climbed up a stairway next to the waterfall and proceeded beyond it to a large chamber where we boarded a boat for the ride across the flooded chamber and back again.  Here, the thunder was a little less.  

The low-level lights that had illuminated our walk thus far were turned off and absolute, can't-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face, blackness surrounded us. There, above us, were the glowworms. It felt good to sit down for a bit and admire them, and especially good to be free of the full volume of the falls.  

Our boat ride across and back was brief.  Before long, we were disembarking and starting to make our way down past the falls again, along the rapids now surging on our left side, and out of the cave.  

The silence outside seemed almost surreal after the pounding we had taken inside.

I'm glad that Jeanne and I had this adventure, despite the physicality.  Had I been 40 instead of 70, I might have found it much less intense.  But what an experience.  Talk about feeling raw, concentrated power. I won't soon forget it. 

We were very glad to get back to our hotel room that afternoon and put our feet up.  And bask in the quiet.  

My next post will show and tell you about the surprise we got the next day as we made our way toward Queenstown.    -djf