Jump – Hercules Trophy 2011 (6023), originally uploaded by Koen BL.

This picture was taken a couple of days ago on the Hercules Trophy in Mechelen, Belgium. Besides being involved in the international organisation, and besides it being amongst the best informal networking events I know, is it a great photo-shoot opportunity as well
More to come. (And more images on Flickr and www.herculesfan.com)

Via Flickr:
The Hercules Trophy in Belgium featured a labour (sport) called Belly Slide, where the members of the team had to glide trough an inflatable castle, hoping they would have enough speed to reach the pool at the end…

Yesterday I went out and bought this small USB-stick-sized device: a PhotoTrackr from Gisteq. Bought it at a shop and only looked at their website later. (If it would have happened the other way around, I would never have purchased from these guys. Their website is filled with 404-not found pages and the functionalities are not working in Firefox.)

But fortunately, the device and the software has been designed by their better team…

The PhotoTrackr Device

The box contains a small CD, the device itself, a (= 1) sheet of paper with setup instructions and a cord to carry the device.

When the software is setup, you will find out that the installed version is not supporting RAW-images by default. That requires an upgrade to the “professional” version. Painless paypall payment of about 16Euro/19.90USD and the software is complete.

The user manual for PC is the recto side of the sheet of paper in the box, the Apple manual in on the verso side.

The use of the device is plain simple.

• The GPS charges the battery using the USB-port of a computer.
• Before starting – time on the device MUST match time on the camera. Matching means, to the second…
• Once unplugged from the computer, the device LED goes to a blue, solid light whle searching the GPS signal
• When a signal is found, it starts blinking blue slowly, recording data. As line of sight is required it stopped working when I put it in my pocket. The lanyard-alike item that comes with the device seems the best way of carrying it. I might hang it to my camera backpack in the next days and see what results that will give me.
• At a certain point, you can push the button on the device and mark that location
• And you can take pictures, while the device is on and with you…

Once back at the desk, you can upload pictures as you do normal (I use Adobe Lightroom). Then you start the Gisteq software, and import the logs from the portable GPS. Next you point to the folder(s) where the images are stored, and the software adds the correct metadata for GPS in every of the images. Nice to have is a map (powered by Google map) in the application that shows your track and the images. The GPS data is compatible with photosites such as Flickr and Picasa.

For me this is the timesaver of the month.  55Euro for the device and 15 Euro for the software upgrade, 70 Euro well spend. Let’s hope the guys at Gisteq use some of that money to fix up their buggy website.

We left Dunedin, after Eva treated us with another great breakfast and even gave us some bite to eat for down the road. Dunedin is not only famous for its yellow-eyed penguins, but for its steepest street in the world too. Eat your heart out, San Francisco: here is Baldwin Street, Dunedin.

Baldwin Street - Dunedin

After some two hours driving, we arrived at the Mouraki boulders. Stones that have been formed over the past centuries in a shape that is about round. Next time, we will get here at low tide, but even now we had some great shots here:

Mouraki - boulders on the beach

Later in the afternoon, we arrived in Lake Tekapo. The lake has this great color:

Lake Tekapo

The turquoise blue colour of Lake Tekapo is created by what seems to be called rock flour: the glaciers grind rock into fine dust. These suspended particles in combination with the sunlight create Lake Tekapo’s unique water colour.

Our Bed and Breakfast, the Lake Tekapo Luxury Lodge, was not luxury at all, and we had the most unfriendly host in all our stays in New Zealand. Can someone please help this women to get rid of an obvious vinegar addiction? To find more funny (but accurate) descriptions on these wannabe lodge-owners, check their tripadvisor comments. We will stay here one night, and have no urge whatsoever to extend our stay here.

First stop: the post-office. Vicky tries to keep me away from bookstores, as she know I will be unable to get out of there empty
handed (especially when they have great old books in the secondhand store, or when coffeetablebooks of nice photographers are in store) I will have to join Books Anonymous when we get back home… Long story short: we had accumulated too many books in the last weeks of travel to allow our airplane home to even lift off. Kiwipost took a little under 10 kilos of books from us and promised to ship them home. Once the books where on their way, we went shop-browsing. First stop: the bookstore

In our travel, we have noticed a lots of qualities in the kiwi lifestyle. But there are some flaws as well. A decent cup of coffee is hard to find. Most coffee will lack any taste as if it was a variation on tea or it must have been made before the settlers arrived on these islands and has since then been cooked so it would be bitter. Some of my friends have strong comments on Starbucks, but in New Zealand that’s one of the few places where the coffee is brewed decently. Vicky and I enjoyed our cup of the black gold.

Dunedin is a rather small city, but the railway station is one of the nicer buildings we have seen here. Next time, we plan on taking the train here – now we just enjoyed the architecture and the mosaics here. On our way back to the hotel we found a nice vegetarian restaurant: Potpourri. After a very tasteful meal, it had started raining in town. We had to head back to the lodge, to be ready for a nature discovery on the Otago archipel, near Dunedin. But first a small stop at the bank, paying my speeding ticket .

Our first stop on the archipel was a wading water, where we met the first couple of New Zealand birds. I was a litlle frustrated since the rain made making decent pictures a little harder than I would have hoped. But the views we had on the birds where magnificent. We even had a close look at the Royal spoonbill (lepelaar), that we had seen breeding yesterday on a rock in the Catlins. We then went on to the only breeding place of Royal Albatrosses on mainland in the world. This time of year is the hatching season, so we had a close look on the breeding parents. The one chick that was born earlier that week was kept out of sight by the parents. We never have seen such majestic birds before. In flight that is, because landing is not their strongest point: young birds will depart from the cliff without so much as even a test-flight and not touch land again for the next five years .

In these years, they will fly the sees between the 30st and the 60st parallel – living from the squid they pick out of the water mostly at night. From then on, they will come on their colony once a year to mate, breed and take off for the rest of the year. Amazing creatures – but another species under pressure as well. Many are in trouble as they sometimes mistake floating plastic for squids…

On the way to our next stop, we had the chance to see a couple of other bird species. I am a fan of birds of prey and was very thrilled to see another couple of Australasian Harriers (Australische Kiekendief) at a couple of meters away. On the cliff where we arrived, we had a good look over a colony of New Zealand Fur Seal (pelsrobben). That’s one more species that has been hunted down near extinction, but is on the return in the last years. The New Zealand Department of Conservation has their hands full in this country – I will blog definitely more about them later.

The colony of Fur Seal had several pups amongst them. Next to the colony, a couple of Sea Lions was playing in the water – generating lots of nervousness amongst the Fur Seal. They are on the menu of these Sea Lions…

By sunset, we arrived at a desolated beach on private land on the archipel. All of a sudden, our guide instructed us to stay low. And in the distance we witnessed a Yellow-eyed pinguin coming out of the sea, after a day of fishing. In their typical style, they walked up to their sleeping grounds in the forest. We had them passing us at less than 10 meters distance. A unique experience when in the silence of the evening we heard their little feet in the water on the beach. Still having thrills in my back when reminding that magical moment. These 2 minutes could have made my whole trip.

Yello-Eyed Penguin

A couple of minutes later, we could see the rest of the pack of penguins making it to the shore, we saw one of the chicks of these penguins from a short distance (in a hiding cabin). Soon it was clear why the penguins were eager to get out of the water:

the sea lions had made it to this beach. And a good penguin is part of a healthy diet for a Sea Lion. We could – with our guide – approach later one of the sleeping Sea Lion males. 400 kilos, but they outrun a human on any beach… I had felt safer on other times in my life.

We drove back to the lodge, very quiet after all the beauty we had seen. We slept well and probably had dreams involving penguins and albatrosses. The fact that I had now taken more pictures than I could possibly store on the hard drive of my computer will be tackled tomorrow.

I have more pictures from this day. I will post them on Flickr, in a set with the New Zealand Animals, when I have found the time to convert from Raw to jpg.

Today announced itself as another great day. The view from our Fiordland Lodge onto the Te Anau lake was stunning again.

The view on Te Anau - morning

We would have loved to stay a couple more days on this great place. Both Vicky and I love pancakes for breakfast, and the ones served here were just great.  We met a couple of Dutch people who gave us some good hints and advice for our journey of today, on where to stop – and where not.

Our route would take us today under the 46th parallel, way more south than Vicky and I ever had been before, and probably will be in the next couple of months… The Catlins are a reserve in the south of New Zealand, where we had a great time.

Variable Oystercatcher - Catlins

The problem with driving in New Zealand is that one never stops being amazed at the landscape we drive in. Everywhere you look is beauty – especially in this reserve.

Lighthouse in the Catlins

We made it – later than expected – to Dunedin. Eva, our host, welcomed us in the Fletcher Lodge, not too far from the center, where we fell asleep in seconds. Probably we counted enough sheep during the day…

Route:

View Directions to Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand in a larger map

After a great breakfast in this wonderful Fiordland Lodge, we were of to Milford Sound once more

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The view in the morning from Fiordland Lodge

We had a lovely morning, but it started raining soon after we hit the road. The road was even worse than yesterday: the rain kept on coming down. The nice thing about that is that all these ad hoc waterfalls in the scenic reserve were fed enough water to come to their full potential. We split tasks: I tried to keep the car on the road, and Vicky told me how nice these waterfalls are

The waterfalls near Homer Tunnel - Fiordland Reserve

We had booked a small cruise on the Milford Sound (a fjord, opening to the Tasman Sea). Despite the rather low visibity we were greated by a very enthousiast guide, Nick. He warned us that we should keep cameras ready and get on the bow of the ship when he told us, as he had met a surprise on sailing in. And yes, we had not left the harbour for more than 20 minutes when he called us in the wheelhouse and we could have a fisrst look at this pod of Dolphins: a mix of Dusky Dolphins and Common Dolphins. The pod remained with the boat for 20 minutes. Some of them even started swiming just in fron of the bow, while the ship was at high speed. Vicky made a small film, so if that has worked out fine, we’ll have it on youtube shortly.

Dolphins in Milford Sound

So you can imagine, this photo-geek standing on the bridge – soaken wet from the rain and the water that came over the bow. Nothing could make me any more wet than I was at that time. We encountered some fur seals on the way back, making a great day complete. We had not seen any of the mountains, but felt we had a great tour with lots of unexpected things happening. This part of the Unesco world heritage has stole our hart, an on a next visit to New Zealand we will definitely make more time in the sounds area.

Today, we were ready for new adventures, after the lazy day we had. At breakfast we met a family of three siblings, traveling with their dad. Nice folks from the USA, too bad we did not stay any longer as I would loved to get to know them better.

Mirror Lakes - between Te Anau and Milford

Our Toyota brought us first to Te Anau, and later to Milford Sound. The weather there was soo bad that we drove back without actually seeing the sound (or better said: Fjord).These Fjords have been created by glaciers, but misnamed to sounds.

We drove back to Te Anau, where we checked in at the Fiordland Lodge, where a great bunch of people greeted us with genuine warmth and interest. A hot coco made us forget the rainy day and the joined effort of Andy, Jonathan, Monique and Delphine at the lodge made it a great evening. The diner was superb, and we had a great night of sleep in a room overlooking the Te Anau lake.

Today at breakfast, we ended up with a very funny couple of Brits. After their hopeless attempts to get us interested in crisket, we went of for a day on the Franz Josef Glacier.

Franz Josef Glacier is the starting point for a great hike in these lovely mountains. So we took full advantage. We walked up to the foot of the mountain, to a great pool (Peter’s pool) where I could take some great pictures in the reflection of the water, to a viewing point over the glacier and to a lake nearby (Wombat Lake).

Franz Jozef Glacier - Peters Pool

At the end of the afternoon, we were in urgent need for sugar, and went back to town. We had a quick, but by New Zealand standards (more about that later) good meal. Tomorrow we will be spending most of our day in the car, so an early night today.

Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand, the 22nd of January, 2011

Hemi and Pauline of the Awatuna Homestead had treated us so well yesterday: we ended the day on the Veranda with that bottle of wine. This morning, plans have been delayed slightly as we had difficulties getting out of bed. The weta waking us up at two in the morning with a deafening concert did not help.

So after a great talk with our hosts, we went for the Franz Jozef Glacier. By noon, we had made it to our home for the next days: the Westwood Lodge. We checked in, had a small lunch and walked up to the glacier. We’ll be back tomorrow, as the day today was rather cold (16C in the valley, a bit colder near the glacier). We needed some heat and ended up in the Hot Pools, after a massage.

Franz Jozef Glacier

That’s when we discovered that we had been bitten on the glacier by the local famous sand-flies. We will get us a stronger repellent before we get back up that mountain.

For you Lord of the Ring fans: the glacier in these pictures is part of the mountain complex that you can see when the beacon of Minas Tirith and the six following beacons are lit.

Franz Jozef Glavier, New Zealand, the 21st of January 2011

So today we had another breakfast at the Wairepo House. The house is part of a plantation that has thousands of apple trees. Some of the apples we eat in Belgium are imported from this very estate. No wonder we had some (very good) apples in the room. The harvest will start in a couple of weeks, and on the whole estate one can see the apples, almost ready to make it to the rest of the world.

We had a nice conversation with the host and other guests on the Rainbow Warrior and the involvement of the New Zealand Navy against the French tests that happened on Mururoa in the 80′s. The ship is now a diving resort in New Zealand.  Oh, and for the Belgian audience that still feels shocked that the French sunk the Greenpeace vessel: the french agent that was the chief of this operation, now works for FN Herstal (a Belgian weapon manufacturer) in their US offices.

And all these discussions made that we left an hour later than expected in the Wairepo house, on our way to Hokatika on the west coast. We headed for the Motueka valley, a beautiful scenery that would make our transfer over the mountains to the west coast as nice as possible. And it was, we looked our eyes out so much that I didn’t notice driving a little faster than allowed when entering the town of Tapawera. That’s 80 NZ$ we could have spent a better way…

Motueka River

speeding tcket, new zealand

I the afternoon, we arrived at the Pancake rocks in Punankaiki. The sea has shaped the rocks here in a pile of pancakes. There should be some blowholes as well, but their sound only happens at high tide about four hours later, wich we were not planning to wait for.

Pancake rocks

We then made it to the Awatuna Homestead lodge, where Hemi and Pauline gave us an extreme warm welcome. They made us some light diner that we enjoyed with a bottle of excellent wine. Another day lived as kings – life can be good!