Day 3: to Te Anau

Today was a high mileage day, about 300 miles. We left the Larnach Castle and rode out to Harrington Point at the far tip of the peninsula.

At the tip of the peninsula is a center for the Royal Albatross, where they study them, and we had booked a tour which included a walk to the viewing area. It was well worth it. We learned a lot about these huge birds, which are the third largest flying birds in the world. For example, after hopping and flapping its wings in the wind for weeks on the edge of the cliff the young Albatross takes its first flight, and immediately heads to South America, which takes about 12 days of soaring and gliding. That's an amazing thing to embark on after first taking to the air. Here are some pictures from the museum and from the observation area.

Here is an Albatross in the grass near the cliff.

And an Albatross flying.

Here is a baby Albatross waiting for mom or dad to bring it food, which often involves the baby waiting a couple of days. Albatrosses mate for life and lay only a single egg every other year. Albatrosses live about 25 to 30 years on average but the oldest known lived to 74, still producing a baby every other year till she died.

It was abut 11:30 when we were done at the Albatross center and we had a lot of ground to cover. As shown in the second map we took the longer scenic route near the coast to get to Te Anau. The ride was mostly on back country roads past farms with sheep in fields. There were lots of curvy roads that wound up and down tolling hills and were lots of fun to ride through.

Eventually we came out at the coast for a nice view of the rugged Pacific Ocean.

We rode through lots more beautiful farm country untill we begin to gain a bit of altitude as we approached Te Anau. We got there a bit before dusk as saw this sunset. After walking into town for dinner we were impressed by the stars in the night sky, as well as that we could not see the Big Dipper.