Fiordland: Milford Sound Cruise

Wow, dudes, sorry, it's been a while since I updated this blog. This is in no way a statement on my enjoyment of New Zealand, but more of a commentary on life-after-NZ and how busy its been.  Anywho, here's more on our New Zealand trip, which was amazing:

After the scenic drive on Milford Road, we made to Milford Sound in time to enjoy a sandwich in the harbor before hopping on the boat for a cruise around the fiord on one of the smaller boats with Mitre Peak.

We had one of Milford Sound's very rare sunny days for our cruise...  apparently Milford Sound is the "wettest inhabited place in New Zealand," so we're talking really rare.  But sun helped with photos, so yay!  Check out how dramatic the harbor is:

Super sheer cliffs (totally vertical), super deep "sounds," aka fiords... in other words, those sheer cliffs continue straight down into the water, reaching depths of over 300 meters.

Gorgeous, huh?

Waterfalls: there is so much rain in Milford Sound that there are a zillion waterfalls, many permanent, but many popping up as the rain falls:

This photo gives some perspective on just how big these cliffs are... look at how they dwarf that big, double-decker boat:

So many waterfalls!

Milford Sound has some seal colonies... most of the seals were just chilling, though. Not much action from these guys:

Snow-capped peaks in the distance:

Clouds rolling in... the rain was catching up with us:

All-in-all, some pretty dramatic landscape views up in Milford.  Pretty cool!

Liveaboard Life

Just some above-the-surface shots from our Andaman Sea liveaboard...

Beautiful islands:

Our boat looked something like this one:

Scuba gear, ready to rock and roll:

Everything on a dive boat is always wet:

The view from our cabin... not too shabby:

Offerings on the front of the boat:

Dolphin!  Or a whale... we couldn't quite tell:

Super cool rocks:

Super cool sunsets:

Scuba Diving in the Surins: Day 1

This past weekend Tim and I decided to get the hell out of Dodge (well, Bangkok) during Thailand's recent elections and do some scuba diving.  We'd heard that Thailand's scuba diving is generally only so-so compared to that of Indonesia, with the exception of the Surin and Similan islands, two small groups of islands in the Andaman Sea off Thailand's west coast, north of Phuket and close to the Burmese border.  At Scuba Steve's urging, we decided to book a 3-day liveaboard to the Surins and Richelieu Rock with Wicked Diving.  Good thing, too, as both the diving and the folks at Wicked were lovely.  I'm planning my next trip back already (well, not reeeeeally, but if any friends/family visit Thailand and insist on a liveaboard, I could be very easily convinced).

So here's the video, photos and description of the first day of our trip with Wicked (you can read Wicked's trip report here, too)...  Friday night we boarded the boat, ate a great meal, got our equipment ready for the next day's early morning dive, and tried to settle in our cabins as the boat lurched (oy, seas were rough that night!) towards the Surin Islands. 

Early Saturday morning we got up and headed out on our first dive, joined by divemaster Dan (you'll see him rocking the yellow snorkel in the videos), fellow diver Jun (blue fins and a camera).  Dive #1, Ao Pakkad, which was relaxing, pretty, and full of schools of sparkly little glass fish.  Sometimes they covered the reef like a blanket and you had to basically sweep them aside to see the other critters!  Also: very curious/friendly tall-fin batfish that alternated between zipping around, sneaking up on you from behind and generally hanging about.

Highlights of the below video:

•  glass fish, glass fish and more glass fish
• one of the many tall-fin batfish stalking fellow diver Jun at 0:18
• lots of lionfish (at 0:46, 4:10)
• Tim reluctantly waving (1:22)
• scorpionfish, master of disguise... see if you can spot him at 1:26
• cute little sea star at 1:51
• 2 morays, 1 rock at 2:59 (and below)

• lobster at 3:33!
• giant clam at 3:58
• white-collar butterfly fish at 4:22
• cute anemone fish side-by-side with juvenile three-spot dascyllus at 5:11
• pretty colorblocked powder blue surgeonfish (cousin to Dory, a palette surgeonfish):

Dive #2, Torinla Pinnacle, is a big, submerged pile of granite, including some major boulders.

The currents were strong when we dove, so we had to descend while holding onto the boat's mooring line.  You can see in the video below, as we descended, we caught site of something pretty awesome: 5 absolutely enormous (like I think they for sure outweighed me and were at least 5 feet long, probably more) and endangered (and therefore rare) napoleon (also called humphead) wrasse!!  You can see them coming out of the blue over the rocks in the video at 0:13.

Other video highlights:

• yellow five-lined snapper nosing around the rocks at 0:28
• big, beautiful blue-ringed angelfish at 0:44
• bubble, bubbles, so many bubbles surrounding us as we ascended to the surface since the current was pushing all our fellow divers' exhaled bubbles up towards us

Not captured on video, but super cool:

• a white-tip reef shark swimming along the edge of the rocks
• a winged pipefish (kinda looked like a stick at first)

Dive #3 was at Koh Torinla, a lovely site.  Right off the bat?  A big 4-5 foot wide Jenkins' ray!:

I don't know why I love feather stars so much, but I do.  So pretty:

The Koh Torinla site had its fair share of curious tall-fin batfish:

 Highlights from the dive video:

• Jenkins' ray.  Woo!
• More glass fish.  Crazy amounts of glass fish, surrounding us like a living fog.
• So, so many super curious tall-fin batfish, sneaking up behind us, schooling and swimming, generally hanging out... they are the stars of this show
• A cool (and big) star pufferfish, floating out off the reef, getting a cleaning(0:32)
• Moray (0:49)
• Lobster (3:10) 
• A gang of bannerfish (3:16)
• Schools of yellow-backed fusiliers (3:42)
• Beautiful oriental sweetlips (I was definitely worried about the results I would get when typing that into Google... heh heh): I looooove the combination of polka dots and stripes in bold black, yellow and white (4:52)
• Turtle! (5:15)