(Pics are on facebook and shutterfly)
Off the very bottom of the South Island is New Zealand's "third island", Stewart Island. I really wanted to go there for two reasons: I wanted to get as far south as I could just because I could and to birdwatch, hopefully to see a kiwi.
Well, I failed to see a kiwi due to problems with booking the boat over there and this is also where my picture-deletion incident occurred...and both occurred in the same hour essentially. Despite these disappointments these were some of the best days of the trip, kinda laidback little coastal dayhikes and fishing with my "cousin", Leslie.
I made the 3-bus-transfers trip down to the ferry with this old Canadian couple I had seen on the Kepler trek the days before...they were heading down to the Island to do their 8th great walk in 8 weeks...I know, beasts! Met Leslie at the final bus to the ferry and made the rough ride across the Foveauz strait with her and the Canadians. We got there on a day with rain and 120km gusts. When we went to the information center about fishing/birdwatching boats, we were told everything was cancelled that night and probably the next day; we bought a bottle of wine for the night and drank it with pasta and chatted and did crosswords for the evening. We had booked the cod-fishing boat despite the pessimism at the i-site and luckily the next day it was perfectly calm and sunny. On the boat it was me, Leslie and 5 older couple from the South Island. Leslie caught the first fish, and in fact, we dominated the day's catch. It was handline fishing, so it was fairly easy and very productive indeed. Most fish, and our target species, were blue cod. Other catches included trumpeters, wrasses and a giant octopus! The guy just grabbed it off the other guy's line and threw it in the deck, picked it pack up and severed the tentacles from the head. The tentacles and subsequently chopped up pieces for bait continued to more for 20 minutes after the guy killed it...soooooo cool. The only annoyance was the mollymawks (read: small albatrosses), which would try to grab the fish as you pulled them off...the fisherman's solution: grab one by the wing and throw it back out...kept 'em away for a bit at least. The fish were all filleted on board, and we were fed first some raw fish marinated in lemonjuice and seawater (tasted nothing like fish...wonderful!) and then a pile of poached fish with bread and butter....deeeelicious, there's certainly a reason why cod are devastatingly overfished haha. We were also all given a portion of the catch; technically it should've been 6 fillets per person, but Leslie and I did not have the appetite or knowledge to cook a dozen fish, so we took one bag which was more than enough. We got back and did a nice little coastal hike, the end of which was where my camera disaster occurred, got back to find out that we had not made the list for our last chance at seeing a kiwi...lame. Got more wine and began our mostly successful fish-cooking experiments: pan-frying and baking...I prefer the former, less fishy tasting. I ended up in some intense conversations with our Australian teacher roomie for the night about the education systems in the US, Australia and NZ.
The next day we went to Ulva Island, bird sanctuary off Stewart Island, where we could see lots of the native bird species without invasive predators or fear of humans. Sightings included tui, kaka, kereru, and the best, the weka. The weka is a flightless rail; rails are a very, very furtive group of marshbirds. On Stewart Island, they come right up to you, literally. One followed us around a beach and even brought out their little fledgling to see us too...soo cool!
Had my last taste of blue cod (I ate it a total of 4 meals mmmm) and caught the 3:30 ferry off the island to meet Leslie's friends for the drive to Christchurch (or so we thought)...
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