Nestor notabilis

This is the bird exploring my lens here. It's a Kea! Oh, how I've dreamt of seeing this bird tear up my stuff. When I drove into the deserted parking lot for The Chasm, an awesome river formation near Milford Sound, this young kea hopped right up onto my side mirror and started gnawing at the window. When I got out of the car to get a close-up, I didn't realize it would get this close up. I enjoyed a good ten minutes with it, watching it chew up everything pliable or shiny on my car, until it lost interest and hopped back into the bush. Magic!

This is a quicky blip because I'm about to head off on a four-day tramp on the Kepler Track. Internet (affordable anyway) is sparse in these parts. I'll have to do some major backblipping and catch-up in about 2 weeks, when I'm all finished up in Fiordland.

After Kepler I'm headed up towards Queenstown, and then I'm jumping right on the Routeburn Track, another four-day trek through epic mountain scenery. After that I have a few days before I'm on the Milford Track, the most famous and beautiful of all NZ tracks! I shouldn't be able to do it--it books up months in advance--but there was a chance cancellation when I checked availability so I grabbed it.

So that's the plan for some time--see you on the other side.