Cool Photo

On Brighton Beach outside of Dunedin I played around with the lighting of the moon, stars and light pollution while relaxing on the Beach around 10-11pm. 15-seconds exposure, 10 second timer so I could get into position. My camera is a Canon Powershot SD950, a 12.1 mega pixel hand held camera. I love this camera! I just wish it had a better telephoto lens. This is about as typical shot of Luke Stover as it gets, I have my Wurtsboro airport cap on and my leather jacket on. The cherry on top would've been my Fox racing sweater, but that was sadly in too poor shape to bring



Macro is great too! This a common symbol of New Zealand known as the Koru, based off the silver fern frond symbolizing new life, growth, strength and peace.It is an integral symbol in Māori art. The circular shape of the koru helps to convey the idea of perpetual movement while the inner coil suggests a return to the point of origin. Thank you Wikipedia!



-"Lukey" Stover We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -- T.S. Eliot

Spring Break: Part II: The Catlins!

If someone asked me to go to one place during their stay in New Zealand, I would probably The Catlins. Comprised of the south-east coast of the southern island of New Zealand, The Catlins have beautiful coastlines, temperate rain forests, and rolling farmlands. Every 10km you say, "hey, were in Ireland!" and then another 10km, "Were in South America?" and then "Hey we made it to the Caribbean!".

After we left Dunedin we headed south to the Southern Scenic Route, which took us along the coast all the way to Invercargill. We actually stayed on this route through the Fiordlands, but ill get to that soon.

Our first stop was Nugget Point, we passed the sign, and in a "spur of the moment sure whatever" we turned around. Luckily we did, It was my favorite spot in the Catlins!
On the way Sophie spotted these Sea Lions, and we got as close as we were comfortable with, about 5 meter. These guys are huge, and we didn't want to disturb, plus you never get this close to one of these unless your behind a pane of glass at the zoo!


Nugget Point is a lighthouse lookout, and it's a good thing they put one there, check out these rocks!


The water was so blue, it felt like a scene out of the pirates of the carribean, this didn't look real.





We decided to have lunch on the side of the road, where a nice outdoor dining set was made out of some old wire spools








We kept driving on, checked out a nice waterfall on a
short where I snapped this cool photo:

At this point we were driving through a temperate rain forest, looking down at long, green, rolling hills. I don't really know what to say to be honest, the pictures tell the story for themselves



Because we were driving through some back roads, Sophie (who couldn't drive here otherwise because she didn't have her license) gave me a rest from driving which allowed me to view some of the scenery. I snapped a video of us touring the country. Cool countryside, a typical driving conversation we would have.



Come sunset, we arrived on a beautiful lookout, and decided to snap some cool photos:



Here we met a french traveler, around our age who had traveled from France to here through turkey, the middle east, Russia, the Himalayas and everything between! He had traveled mainly by foot, carrying about 60-80 pounds on his back, or various means of travel, such as horseback over the Himalayas. New Zealand was his last destination before he returned home in 2 weeks. He said he was tired, just wanted to go home. I can't blame the kid, most of his travels (which i think was around 8 months, maybe 12) was while he was alone. Well, he put us to shame. We were living in style in this cramped van/bed/kitchen! haha.

After the sun set we proceeded to slope point, the southern most tip of the southern island. Unless you go to the Stewart island south of Invercargill, this is as close as your gonna get to Antarctica. We slept here on the side of the road and crossed over a sheep pasture to get to the coast. A pretty cool feeling to be this far south of the world.


This sums up our trip to the Catlins. Yes, we only spent one day in my favorite place in New Zealand. You could easily spend a couple weeks here, and you couldnt take in all of the wide range of beauty offered here. Well, theres still the summer!

Spring Break: First to Otago!

So I begin in an attempt to document my spring break. Sure, 12 days, cant be that hard Luke! Well it is. Over those 12 days we almost covered the entire perimeter of the south island!

Well, first day we used the van to go shopping for the trip, driving through the city of Christchurch was quite nerve-racking with this large van with many blind spots (not to mention I've only driven on the left side of the road for a total of 1 hour before this trip.

Out of the city, we head to Dunedin! No problems at this point, although I had to be reminded a couple times by my fellow passengers I was driving on the wrong side of the road. Most of the roads outside of town centers are 100 kilometers per hour, or 60mph. I'm used to 60mph, but the "Main Highway 1" of New Zealand is usually as wide as my home street which is usually 30mph! The rental company said they just completed this national highway last year. A little different from our road infrastructure eh?

Our first stop on the way to Dunedin was the quaint town of Oamaru, where we saw yellow-eyed penguins.

Next, the Moeraki Boulders! These were strange perfectly round rocks along the coastline huddled together.

We arrived at Dunedin at dusk and we now began our next challenge: Trying to find a place to sleep... for free. We were able to find a nice campground on Brighton Beach with a clean set of toilets! Score! We braved through our first attempt at cooking and sleeping, and it worked out surprisingly well!

The next morning we went to the beach and enjoyed some oatmeal. eating mediocre food in awesome places seems to make the food taste better

So we hit the city! Home of the most photographed building in the southern island, the Dunedin Train Station!

Then off to the art gallery, which was quite nice.

Because we didn't want to be spending any money, that was about it for activities in town.
So we headed out to the Otago Peninsula! where we saw some sheep (they're everywhere), albatross, and Shags

and... that was about it for Dunedin.