We cross the cook strait with our car with our car, In New Zealand, morning 1 January 2025. The old night in Wellington left us without hangover, With its fireworks of Verbena de Pueblo in the port, His fresh summer, And the feeling of being a soulless city. It was a short visit and we were almost long. Route trips are like this, You fall in love or do not fall in love, And with the capital there was no arrow.
The sea was somewhat chopped on the journey, Until the ship was introduced between the islets that lead to Picton, on the southern island of the country. We disembarked quickly and went to sleep in Nelson. We do not have time to go to some of the wineries where they produce the famous white wines of Marlborough, But we do have time to get to the lovely city of Nelson and drink them during dinner.
We do not have time to go to some of the wineries where they produce the famous white wines of Marlborough, But we do have time to get to the lovely city of Nelson and drink them during dinner.
Generally, We slept all the trip in motels. It is convenient to make reservations with time. The accommodations in NZ are not cheap and, how we would check the following days, The island begins to implude tourists, At least in high season like our Christmas trip.
It rained that day on car between Picton and Nelson, And yet we intuit that the South Island was, how they had warned us, A more rugged landscape. An almost perfect empty canvas. That feeling will only increase in the following days. There are places that are enjoyed from the car. New Zealand enters that group.
The next morning, The sky was clean and the sun above and bright. We went to Cape Foulwind. There begins a path, that borders a hill that gives a bay. They are almost three kilometers of first leg and three others back. We saw a guy who did paraglider About our heads. We look at that He stayed like still, floating, contemplating a scenario that neither he nor we ended up believing.
At the end of the road there is a lighthouse and some rocks where sea wolves live. We stopped at various times contemplating the harmony of the wind and waves, And we verify that the trip is a cluster of coincidences. Cape Foulwind's name (end of the unfavorable winds) put it in 1770 Captain Cook, that when passing with his ship he suffered there a huge storm. What would have written from Wellington if I had not rained or would have met someone very funny with which a party night had spent?
It's pretty, But you start to intuit the problem that I think the island has: Too many catwalks, Protections, posters ... To the beautiful New Zealand you have to disheveled her.
We stop to drink a beer and chop something in the Star Tavern, A pleasant and good prices site, And we went to Punakaiki. There are visit the Pancake Rocks, A geological area next to the sea in which the water has eroded the limestone and generated some marine geysers. It's pretty, But you start to intuit the problem that I think the island has: Too many catwalks, Protections, posters ... To the beautiful New Zealand you have to disheveled her. That night we sleep in Hokitika, With his long beach full of dead woods with which they make sculptures. We had one of the worst seafood that I have never eaten.
From there it is on their way to the south and the glaciers are reached. Arriving at Franz Josef Glaciar we stopped on the road. Next to a river there was a row of green stones moss, rojas, Azul Azul and behind a thick and dark green mount bounted from clouds. We stopped, We saw it, We photograph it. It's like a custom, stop and look. Traveling like this is very simple.
In the Franz Josef Glacier the ice is already a memory. The mountain climbs and you find in a corner the distant trail of the "solid snow". A poster shows you how it has been going back to almost disappear in a century. The world is consumed and we look at it as consumed. Sapiens Bobos, too intelligent not to believe us immortal.
In the town of Franz Josef He gave us a kiwi sanctuary, A strange native bird unable to fly that is the country's symbol. At least we saw them. It is a threatened species of extinction. And for her, investigating, We understood something else the country.
It is a threatened species of extinction. And for her, investigating, We understood something else the country.
NZ is a strange land separated from the rest of the world makes 80 million years. The only native mammal of both islands is the bat. There were not even humans until the Maori arrived in the thirteenth century from Polynesia. Then, In the XVIII, The British arrived. Europeans were stronger and submitted to the first settlers, Foreign too, But claiming his "right of pernada". Actually, This land was forgetting until men reached up everything.
And with them came development, The fight of brave pioneers who died trying to tame distant lands in which death was hearing them shear. We had to have a lot of value to get out of a British island to try to prosper in a place that had no maps. In a second part that we will publish on this southern route I will talk more about this.
But in addition to brave, The human is greedy, in present, And with it ruins the future of others. The British brought from Australia Tsarigüeyas, u oposum, and introduced chaos in the ecosystem. Dozens of their bodies are seen in the asphalt, fluffy, run over by vehicles. We were struck by that unpleasant scene we saw everywhere. And then we understood, By informing me to make a report, that they were annihilating them.
“The Tsorigüeyas, First introduced in New Zealand in the nineteenth century by his skin, They have become important predators, causing various environmental and economic problems. They are opportunistic omnivores who consume eggs, chicks and even adults of native birds such as the kerer?, kiwi and tea??”, David Lewis explained to me, Member of the Predator Free Nz organization.
The first successful release in New Zealand was in 1837 In Riverton, Southland. Then, There were others 38 Liberations from Australia by individuals and acclimatization societies, The last in 1898
The first successful release in New Zealand was in 1837 In Riverton, Southland. Then, There were others 38 Liberations from Australia by individuals and acclimatization societies, The last in 1898 ", Keith Michell explains in an article by New Zealand Deerstalkers Association in whose header is the expeditious message of “Kill Opossums”.
And there the human greed entered. At the beginning of the 20th century there were already researchers who warned that the opposition was a danger to the entire ecosystem. "Create or not, in 1921 Rules for the capture of tsigüeadas were established, that included the requirement to obtain a license. Liberations were still allowed with the written consent of the Department of Internal Affairs until 1922, year in which all legal liberations were ended. There were a large number of unauthorized releases during others 20 years and it wasn't until 1947 When all the restrictions of your hunt were eliminated », Remember Mitchell .
The excuse? And 1919, H.B. Kirk, Professor of Botany and Zoology at the University of Victoria, After studying the situation before the given alarms, sentenced: “The damage to the New Zealand forests is insignificant And it is more than compensated for the value of the sale of skins for the community ”. The scientist was not successful.
It turned out that the Tsarigüeadas, guilty of nothing and with the same instinct of survival of Maori and British, In addition to leaves they eat other things. “The leaves are the main part of your diet, But the Tsorigüeyas are opportunistic omnivorous and eat native birds and their eggs, native land snails such as Powelliphanta and invertebrates such as w?t?. There are trail camera videos showing opossums preying on native birds such as fantails/p?they burned y kea", Peter Morton explained to me, director del Department of Conservation National Predator Control Programme.
Not having predators, The dogs that also brought sapiens do not have them saved on the island, They multiplied until they were 80 million
Not having predators, The dogs that also brought sapiens do not have them saved on the island, They multiplied until they were 80 million. The authorities have decided to end all of them before 2050. It's funny, In Australia where some of their species came from being protected by being in danger of extinction.
Is it ethical? "Actually, The not ethical is doing nothing. Wheel, armiños, Comadrejas, Zarigüeyas, cats and ferrets have been introduced by man in the native landscape. If nothing is done to protect the birds, bats, New Zealand lizards and insects, will be extinguished ", Lewis replied.
Nature is cruel, fragile. The strongest prevails and kiwi, to whom we contemplated with its long beak and its wave body of fat rear move in a habitat without just light in the sanctuary, It is in the weak. Or not, It depends on how you look, because there he was pecking insects and larvae that tried to flee the fearsome kiwi for them.
That afternoon we visit the Fox glacier. From the entrance of the beautiful Matheson Lake it is seen that he still retains some of his ice tongue. We cross a mantle of red leaves in a mushroom stick forest. We sleep in a motel with the awareness that all that space would be different without us, los sapiens, that we transport life and death where we are going.
