On Stewart Island you don’t have to take off onto the Rakiura Great Walk or head out to sea, but can do a number of local tracks along the bays and through the forest. To complement the walk around a few of the bays south of Halfmoon Bay, I combined four local tracks into a […]
Stewart Island is great albatross watching territory, and I had a fabulous time on 23 December 2014 on my pelagic bird watching tour. Fortunately, the tour was not to leave until noon because the morning was very overcast again and wouldn’t have made for as great photos as the afternoon. We boarded the Aurora skippered […]
The Rakiura National Park takes up a big part of Stewart Island. There is a short 3-day track, the Rakiura Great Walk, or you can go on longer, 7-12-day tracks that take you through very secluded forest. I decided to do part of the Rakiura Great Walk from Lee Bay to Māori Beach and back […]
Stewart Island has about 750 km of coastline (compared to just 28 km of roads). There is a bay after each bend, and many have nice bright sandy beaches. Beware though that the water temperature reaches only about 14º C on a few very hot summer days. Normally, it’s around 10º C. In the water […]
The first trip that I took was to Ulva Island, an open bird sanctuary in the Paterson Inlet, on Sunday, 21 December 2014. Birds and regenerated rainforest are the main attractions on this small island, about 10 min. by small boat away from Golden Bay Wharf. I took the 8:30 a.m. water taxi with a […]