29.2.08

mirroring danger... (museum quest part 11)

Place: Mirror Lake
Baskets Left: 3

it's not every day one can say their being hunted... sadly people of the web wide world this is one of those days for me (come to think of it, does this happen to other people ever or just me?).

ms. rhonwyn warned me that mythical creatures may very well be after me on this job she sent me on... who knew 3 dusty old maori baskets could be that desirable. needless to say i've now met my tracker (what if there are more out there come to think of it?!?)...

something that calls itself whiro, and is clearly maori related... though i have no clue at moment what or who whiro is... once i'm out of danger i'll be looking up a BUNCH of stuff in this maori book i bought back in invercargill (why didn't i follow ms. rhonwyn instructions in the first place?).


the reason this situation has become particularly pronounced is that whiro tracked me down in milford sound. one of the most isolated and remote areas in all of new zealand. there is only one road in and out of the whole region, and as best i can tell whiro is now waiting for me somewhere on it...

so i'm now driving my way out of the fiordland as fast as i can (within safety limits... the roads here are really treacherous!)

i'd been making great progress. i hadn't even needed to stop to hit the little dinosaur room (considering how scared i was i kinda needed to go sooner or later). i was 3/4 of the way back to te anau when ahead on the road i noticed something...

a car... now this was not in and of itself abnormal. i'd passed probably a hundred, and i'm not exaggerating. a hundred cars. milford sound is a very popular tourist spot... this car though had glowy green headlights... which i've never seen before...it was also speeding. i hoped that somehow it was just someone really wanting to see milford.

as it approached the sun glinted off it funny (or at least what i could see through the blinding aura of it's green high beams). it was as though the surface of the car were... oh no! green rock!!!

it made no sense, but somehow an ancient maori being was a car?!? i thought miss rhonwyn only mythical creatures would be after me... not demon cars too!!!

oh well i thought as it was about to rocket past me on the road. going that fast it'd fly by me, and probably not even realize i was in this car!

i'd thought these thoughts too soon... as it was about to whizz by me suddenly there was a loud screech of rubber on pavement. my eyes shot to my rear view as we passed...

rather than shot off down the road behind me suddenly the green car swung in behind me... burning rubber as it went...

they don't do it better in hollywood! more to the point i was now in a REAL car chase... and from that little stunt i'd just seen this car was a way better driver than me! how was i possibly going to loss him?


the only good news, that little cross lane 180 degree trick had slowed him down... he was a ways behind me now, but gaining speed... FAST! (pun intended i guess).

than a beacon of hope approached on the road. a sign ahead which read... mirror lake turn off in 1km...

i had an idea. there was sure no way i was going to out run a sports car on the road, but i sure could lose it off the road!

i pulled in rather fast (and to be honest unsafe) to the mirror lakes pullin. on my speedy young tyrannosaur legs (man this being stuck at age 2 developmentally has been paying off on this mission a LOT!) i shot away from my car, and onto the forest trail. in my pockets safely sat the baskets.


that other car could do what it wanted to my car, but there was no way it was getting onto the gangplank walkways!

i couldn't help but notice in this beautiful weather (and sun fully in the sky. when i stopped earlier it'd been morning) that the lakes were even more pretty.


though they had lost some of their mirroriness...

than my attention came back to the here and now. the green car pulled up to the turn off.

it really was a bizarre and almost alien looking thing. though it basically was a car everything about it was wrong. its smooth surface was not actually smooth like a normal car, but rather pitted and cracked like metamorphic rock. the green headlights glowed in at unearthy brightness that show out even here at the car's flank. on the roof of the car were what looked like ribs or spikes embedded in its surface. in various places it had glowing maori emblems or symbols that seemed to just float there.

as i watched the car, i was overcome with a tingly feeling that went through my whole body. similar to when i'd run into whiro earlier this morning, and a little less intense than when i'd opened one of the baskets dosing myself in magic... or what was it ms. rhonwyn called it... mystic gradient radiation...

why was i tingling? clearly this all tied into my opening the basket, but how?

at least here on the path i was safe from this demon car. hopefully it'd get bored of waiting for me, and move on... if not i'd cleared the worst of the mountains, and could probably walk back to civilization and resume my journey on the nice safe open road...

suddenly the tingle got worse... almost as bad as opening the basket in fact!... there was a strange vacuum like sound. the surface of the car suddenly rippled and wrapped as though it were made of liquid...

tentacles of greenstone crept off the car and onto the ground. a puddle of fluid rock gathered on the ground for a moment, and than the stone started to ooze up into a shape... not just any shape... but the form of... of a?... well a whiro...

so that was it! i'd seen enough stuff on TV like this to get it... this wasn't a demon car... exactly... rather a whiro possessed automotive...

meaning i wasn't safe anymore at all! whiro could easily follow me onto these trails!

i quickly backed up to the far fence and jumped over landing as softly as i could... which wasn't perfect. i'm a sad excuse for a dinosaur at moment! you'd think i could wander the forest with stealth and ease like no other... wrong!

rather than keep going that direction i decided to run underneath the pathway and closer to the cars... whiro's now looked as normal as could be...

suddenly there were heavy yet strangely delicate foot steps on the gang planks... whiro strolled along its head craning side to side up and down clearly looking for me...
it was almost as though it could sense where i'd been! it wandered up to the exact spot i'd stopped at when its car had pulled up... than it looped around, exactly as i had to where i'd hide watch it peel itself off the car...

oh man i thought... i was only metres away! if it was sensing where i was it'd be on top of me in seconds!!!

i real should have gone to the little dinosaurs room before now... though it wasn't a probably after that thought (good thing i only wear a human style shirt, and not the pants!).

whiro perked up either alert or annoyed when he hit the spot i'd leapt off the gangplank.

it just stood there for over a minute statue still... for what reason i had no clue.



suddenly... startling me... it lept off the pathway down onto the ground...


but not where i'd landed. it'd over shot, and was several metres from the foot of the pathway where i'd landed...


than whiro started to wander towards the mirror lakes... directly away from me! its eyes darting this way and that. much more erratic and urgently than when it was on the pathway...

what was going on? i wandered as my heart stopped pounding like a drum in my chest...

a second ago whiro was following my every foot step... now it was as lost as me at a vegetarian buffet.
whiro just kept wandering aimlessly, and within a few minutes had wandered completely off into the forest.

i poked up from my hiding spot... the greatness of my hiding was the most dinosaurian thing i've done ever as far as i can tell. i mean look in that photo. can you easily see me?

there i am... how i mastered the art of camouflage like that is beyond me... i hadn't practised or anything... just something inside me made me do it that pro star... oh well i had to put a pin into this tapping of my tyrannosaurian nature for a later time...

cautiously wandering back up on the pathway for a better vantage point (i didn't want to sneak up the small hill i was on to the cars only to find i'd been tricked)...

there was no sign of whiro anywhere...

rather than look a gift moment in the watch i sprinted back to my car...

moments later i was speeding down the road again. whiro and its car were now safely behind me, and the open road was only an hour away...

my first task after reaching the safety of the open was to find out what: whiro was, the baskets were, and what was happening in general!

i hoped i'd left whiro in my dust, and that was the last i was going to be seeing of it... yeah i know people of the innerweb pretty slim chance of that being the case indeed...

to be continued...

2.2.08

milford sound (milford part 2) (museum quest part )

Location: Milford Sound
Baskets Left: 3

so my mission for ms. rhonwyn, of getting rid of these maori artifact flax baskets hasn't exactly been going so well. not only did i utterly mess up and break the number one rule of NOT opening the baskets (which turns out to overdose you in a mystically charged light show), but i've gotten myself corned in the fiordland, and at moment milford sound. this is kinda a problem because there's only one way in or out of the area. meaning if my pursuers (whom i hadn't yet seen) were to catch up with me here than i'd have a really tough time escaping...

there was good news by noon for me... or so it seemed at the time.


having just sailed around the entirety of milford sound, and checked out the underwater observatory, i was on a boat which was going straight back to milford port. meaning i could resume my quest across the country, and more importantly get out of the restricted area of the fiordland...

with one last look at the underwater observatory (the pic above) we were off.


i have to admit i was a little sad i couldn't stick around and enjoy things here more. in fact enjoy them a lot more.

i LOVE the fiordland to pieces (well hopefully not to pieces... otherwise we'd lose all the cool stuff in it!). it would have been nice to just have been able to chill around the place and really explore it... as opposed to my hit and flee strategy of the moment.

the underwater observatory would have been cool as to stick around longer in. due to its being an aquarium into the REAL ocean all sorts of cool things swim by it. dolphins on occasion, sharks, even a leopard seal one week!!!

the weather had cleared in the time i'd been down under the water. suddenly the sound seemed like a whole new place...

not that it still wasn't cool, but in my opinion without that rain their almost never without, the sound (okay again techincally fjord) loses some of its majesty without the clouds, rain, and fog...

well okay most of its majesty...


alright only a smidgen...

though it definitely lost some of its lost world aura.

the nice weather meant at least it was going to be smooth sailing for the last 15 minutes.


i also realized it still could be the lost world seeing the lush forests and shoreline bathed with oh so nice sunny light...

it was definitely a different place in clear weather. you could REALLY see the mountains and their landscape. it just looked like mountains with some water filling their valleys (even if in this case the valley went down 300m!!!).


than as we passed a cave carved in the side of the mountains i spotted movement. more penguins!!! (granted my camera didn't catch them so well from that far away... the tiny duck shaped white spot in the middle is one of them)

the boats passing them disturbed the penguins into running away. so off into the water they swam. (again my camera didn't catch them so well, but their those tiny rippling things in the center of this photo).


the rest of our return to port was pretty uneventful... get the pun there? "pretty" uneventful. cause it was still so "pretty" hehehehehehe


as we pulled back into harbour i felt a slight sense of relief. i'd finished here in the fiordland. now i could resume my trip, and more important hit the open road where i had some options to evade pursuit.

next i'd have to make my way up through central otago and on through to christchurch.

i was so busy picturing and thinking about this next move i didn't notice the harbour front around me. including one VERY mystic costumer standing right there waiting for me...

snapping me to my senses, from behind me the scariest voice i'd ever heard in my life. "halt kauwheke te kura!!!"


i turned to the weirdest sight i'd ever seen in my life! to be really fair people of the innerweb i've seen a LOT of weird things in my time (as i'm sure you'll agree having seen many of them on my blog!). a MOVING, talking, and i think living maori statue! (very much like the one of tu-te-raki-whanoa i'd seen in the lobby earlier today... though this was clearly a different being than tu-te-raki-whanoa). only this one wasn't carved out of anything, rather was made of greenstone, but flexible rubbery bendable greenstone...

what was really odd no one else seemed to notice it standing right there (just look in the picture their standing their looking off into la la land).

it moved towards me menacingly, and spoke in maori... yet somehow i understood what it said to an extent (i had NO idea how at the time). "so you are now the bearer of the , kauwheke te kura," i wasn't sure but i think kauwheke te kura was the name it had given me. "are you seriously the best tane could find to be his champion???" it now mocked me.

the thing whatever it was advanced closer drawing up its huge claw like hand/fingers (they didn't really separate into finger, claw, or hand clearly. rather were four pieces of flexy greenstone).


"i am traumador," i feebly stated. i won't lie to you people of the web wide world, i was SO scared. "i have no idea who 'tane' is. i work for the otago museum, and am not able to discuss with you my task at the present time," i tried to sound formal and important, but my terror caused my voice to crack several times throughout those two sentences.

i couldn't help but wonder when this thing was going to ask me if i was a god for some reason...

it craned its head in... either confusion and/or disgust... i myself was taken back for a moment... had i been that effective at being intimidating? "tane insults me by sending a warrior who speaks pākehā?!?" it hissed in revilement... i understood now. i'd spoken to it in english (i don't know maori after all), and pākehā is maori for european... i could understand it, but it might not have understood me...

"who are you?" i asked both out of genuinely wanting to know the answer, and also to see if this thing understood english.

it paused yet again. "how is this i understand you're flithy tongue kauwheke te kura?" it asked puzzled. it looked me head to toe from a distance, almost seeming weary. "ah! you have exposed yourself to the mana of the . you are tapu now. i shall find it most enjoyable to dispense justice onto you. in answer to your question kauwheke te kura, i am whiro. from this day forward the bringer of your doom!"

with a might roar-like sound whiro, as it called itself, readied to charge...

i panicked... i thought i was going to die... i resorted to a move from the movies... "what is that?!?" i screamed (my current fear helped with the authenticity of the scream i assure you!) pointing out into no where...

to my amazement whiro's head and attention shifted to the direction i pointed. i almost passed out in relief, but sure didn't waste a fine opportunity...
with my nice speedy juvenile tyrannosaur frame i ran as fast as i could... which to be honest is pretty fast (though i've never clocked it officially). fortunately for me there was a pathway at the end of dock that led along a flax covered sea wall. within under a minute i'd gotten a good distance from the port (as you can see in the photo) behind relatively good camo cover.


once here i hid behind the flax for good measure...

this was worse than my run in with that ghost a few weeks back!!! in fact this seemed so much more real in comparison... i wonder was that really a ghost in the graveyard?... i put a pin in that tangent for now though. there was a very REAL and scary thing after me... just like ms. rhonwyn had said there'd be!... i had to get out of here alive if i was to worry about the graveyard ghost...

after several minutes it became apparent whiro was not following me... i only had the line of single flax plants to hide behind. if it'd come up the same path i'd have been a sitting duck...

cautiously i raised my head up from behind the flax...

even at this distance i could see whiro stalking the dockside clearly angered by my escape...

so i'd survived my first run in with an "atua"... yet i still had a HUGE problem...

i had to now somehow outrun this thing out of the fiordland. the worst part being this headland i'd run onto didn't connect to the parking lot... i had to head past the port to get back to my car or even just the road!

making that easier whiro realized it'd lost me... for now... and that to catch me it had to hit the same single road out of here i was going to have to take...

so with great fear and anxiousness i crept past the port, and into the parking lot to my car. whiro was no where to be seen.

as i started up the car i gulped a big gulp. whiro was somewhere ahead of me in a very restricted area (i couldn't even sneak out on foot due to the extreme mountains), and i had no choice but to come to him...

the chase was about to start...

to be continued...

1.2.08

milford sound (milford part 1) (museum quest part 9)

Location: Milford Sound
Baskets Left: 3

well despite things being a lot more stressful on ms. rhonwyn's assignment of getting rid of these maori artifacts, i can say that the first part of my latest stop milford sound ranks as one of the most AMAZING things i've ever seen (i know i've said that a lot this week... basically the fiordland as a whole place is my favourite on earth at moment!!!).

it is stressful none the less. due to my being dumb, and peeking in one of the baskets i've overdosed myself with mystic energy. meaning that i'm theoritically trackable by all sorts of scary things... i haven't run into any yet so i'm not sure they are following me, but i don't really want to find out...

so i'm going to book it through milford sound as fast as i can. the main reason there is only one way in and out of the place, and if i get caught by something in the region it'll be hard to escape!

though why i'd want to escape is beyond me...

the walk from the parking lot alone has been incredible.

this very forest was one of the filming sites for walking with dinosaurs... okay and a bunch of other more "important" movies... one of them had a lord ring in it or something...

approaching the milford port (the settlement here is pretty sparce actually. turns out that milford is in the greater fiordland national park, and as of such you can't build a lot in it... so there's a port, air strip, and motel/resturant/pathetic gas station/bar here... that's IT!) what was i saying again?

oh yeah!

so to get to the port you go through the amazing jungle i mentioned a second ago, and than this weird covered stretch of sidewalk... wonder why it's covered?

not too much later i was at the port. despite it being first thing in the morning there were buses and heaps of people about it... though the parking lot was pretty empty. i wondered what it was going to be like once the day got rolling...

i double checked the bundle ms. rhonwyn had assembled for me. she'd taken the liberaty of getting me a pre arranged boarding pass for any of the boats i might need.

the inside of the port was fairly mellow. mostly a big empty lobby, but all the surrounding walls were tour company kiosks. compared to some places i'd been (mostly in canada) it was pretty sparcely decorated.

though i did notice three big things on the walls...
they were giant sand flies... which if you've never heard of or encountered before are pretty much the same thing as canadian black flies. their tiny as, and itchy as if they bite... ten times more itchy than a mozzy bite... i'm just glad they have trouble getting through my scales (though sadly they can get through the weaker skin between my scales BOO!).

the size of these ones had me a little troubled. had my old boss mike at the vancouver eco centre kept on with his insane plot to produce monster size insects?!?


i decided to keep clear of these sand flies. at that size they probably would be able to get through even larry's skin!

wow a cool maori statue of someone... er something?

according to the sign this was a maori demi-god named tu-te-raki-whanoa. he carved the extreme terrian of milford out of the earth, and is a pretty well respected mythical dude...

though i'd been meaning to brush up on all things maori (especially since ms. rhonwyn hasn't been able to tell me more about the maori connection to my mission) i decided dwelling reading wasn't an option till i hit the open road again.

so out i ventured onto the peer to catch a boat to take me around the sound.

immediately the spectacle and awe of the area struck me! i mean just look at that... the picture only captures a fraction of it. trust me!

this picture does a little better, but still if you can come down here and check out milford do it!

looking at this unbelievable water scape i was in total harmony with the awesomeness of this current part of the assignment.


boarding one of the many boats that sail around the sound i was off within 10 minutes...

if a picture is worth a 1000 words people of the innerweb than with this post you can call me a master novel writer!

heading off into the sound i was going to learn why not only modern tourists love to check out the area, but also its connection to the maori...

one of the first things i discovered was that it rain a LOT in milford! in fact if it doesn't rain for just 5 days in a row they consider it a drought in the area...

because of all that rain a few things happen. first thing you notice are tons of little water falls everywhere as that run off pours down the mountains. second the water is a funny bright light blue. this is in fact all that fresh rain water pouring ontop of the salty ocean water so much that it doesn't mix properly. so there ends up being a layer of fresh water a few metres thick in the sound. something i would quickly learn that has a BIG impact on the local ecology...

all that dawned on me immediately was that i'd never seen anywhere else like it in the world.

sure it kinda looked like the rockie mountains with a ocean in the middle of them, but they didn't have the crazy waterfalls or extreme plants like milford...

now there are waterfalls in milford and then there are WATERFALLS in milford! keep in mind that i'm standing a few km from that fall off in the distance...


time for another chapter on my photo novel...

the boat made some nice close up stops by the mountains/waters edge for us to check out things.


first we checked out the geology. this whole area is composed of volcanic rocks (so no fossils... sad). in these you get many interesting granites and marbles, but most special of all is new zealand jade aka greenstone.

a substance of mega importance to the maori! they make everything from weapons to jewelry from the stuff. this is one of the few places in the world it comes from!!!


the extreme layout of the mountains and the ocean is due to a very familiar geologic force to me. glacial erosion. alberta had tons of that happen. well here same thing. the huge heavy chunks of ice carved out this fjord (it shouldn't be called a sound because it is technically a fjord!).


which explains the extreme slope and angles of these mountains.

it is kinda cool how all these factors add together into... well this...
man oh man i was into this place, let me tell you!
there were more waterfalls than i could take photos of...

it was all a bit to take in to be honest.
i know i said it about doubtful sound, but milford could also very easily be the lost world.

the trip was going super slow due to spectical of what i was seeing, but super fast at the same time.
it was pretty obvious why this was considered a special place by the maori (i'd be surprised to find anyone who won't think the same thing!)... at the same time nothing had happened to the baskets...

to be honest that was a little alarming. if something was going to happen with them clearly it was going to happen here...

we'd been out for almost two hours, and the baskets weren't effected at all by the sound (technically fjord!)...

there wasn't much more milford for me or the baskets to cover. we were approaching the mouth of the whole place, and were going to be back tracking.

not that the opening to milford is that unimpressive... well actually i guess it sort of is. because of an extreme bend at it's mouth you don't really notice it from the ocean. the great explore james cook missed it during his exploration of the west coast of new zealand...

the one thing that was plainly clear was the difference in color between the fresh water layer and normal salt water. in this picture you can see the bright light blue of the fresh water along the edge of the shore.

this was a problem though. if these stupid baskets of ms. rhonwyn's were going to react to cool things you'd think this would be the place. we'd done the whole thing, and indeed nothing...

i grew worried. backtracking was going to take almost 2 hours.

not only did this leave me in the isolate fiordland longer, but there must be something i was missing about these baskets (i really should look up what mana means).

the fun was bleeding from the situation, despite the fact we drew closer to one of the most amazing parts of milford. the stirling waterfall...

stirling is one of the only falls around here NOT caused by rainfall, but rather glacial meltwater. meaning not only does it run year round no matter the weather, but it also has a limited lifespan as the glacier that feeds it slowly retreats towards nothingness.

okay so the sight of this grand fall did manage to suck me out of my worry. if only for a moment.
thing was the captain was going to bring the boat in for a close look... a real close look!

compared to the other small water falls stirling is a beast!

getting close to it, you sure feel it let me tell you!
i got so cold that i needed to retreat into the boat to try and dry off!

a few minutes later an announcement came over the PA system. we were going to stop at the under water observatory, and all passengers who wanted to check out the "unique" underwater ecosystem of milford should get off here to check it out.
of course! this was it i thought...
i needed to take the baskets here!
so off i got.
they had an alright info centre on the top. the real attraction i learned though was below me...
you see the underwater observatory was just that, an underwater installation. down there you could see the rather special coral gardens...

basically what these cunning kiwis had done was stick a giant tube down into the ocean.

so what you got was an air aquarium full of people...

into the water world of fish and coral...

definately one of the more creative and neat ways to see fish i've seen in a long time.

the main attraction of the coral gardens were the very rarely seen black corals. these are normally a very deep water coral that doesn't occur anywhere near the surface. meaning that few people see them... except here.
due to that fresh water layer up top all sorts of things change in the sound (again really a fjord!) that tricks the coral into thinking that it is in a deep ocean setting. so they grow mere metres below the surface.

man oh man are they pretty.
throwing me off for a couple minutes was the fact they were ghostly white as opposed to "black" like their name. turns out that in the olden days the only way old time sailors saw these corals was after they were dead and lost their color, and turned well black. kinda funny origin of a name if you ask me!
there were all sorts of cool and pretty fish swimming around too.





even more cool looking out just beyond the corals appeared to be a galaxy of... well technically fish... but they looked like stars. there was that many of them, and they were that small.
around the observatory windows they'd transplanted the whole black coral ecosystem. so that you got a front row seat to all the critters interactions and lifestyles.

definately the highlight though were the ubber pretty and kinda eerie black corals though.

after spending 30 minutes down here though i began to feel the pressure again... the baskets were still their boring dusty old selves!

fortunetly another tour boat showed up quickly after i made this realization. hastily i made my way to the surface to head back to the port, and to make my way out of the fiordland (though it saddened me to have to do so).

as the boat jetted away from the observatory, and back towards the port i tried to relax.

i mean ms. rhonwyn was pretty insistent that something was after these baskets, but she had no idea what it was... well other than it was something maori related...

maybe she just watched too many movies...

more to the point what were the odds it'd know i was here at milford?

yeah i thought to myself. why panic? even if this thing hunting you figured out i was in the fiordland due to my opening the basket at doubtful sound, what were the odds it'd know i was heading here to milford?


to be honest despite the odds i should have taken the bet...

back at the port i had a real unpleasant surprise waiting for me, and my fun little "assignment" was about to become a full on quest!!!

to be continued...