Qur trip to New Zealand in March 2005

Below are some of the pictures Barb and I took during our recent trip to New Zealands South Island. 

It was truly a lesson in geology! The whole island is as it is due to the grinding together of two tectonic plates - the Pacific plate and the Australasian plate over the last 20 million years or so. Along the length of the South Island is a fault line that represents the meeting of the two. A good part of western South Island is travelling northwards at about 20 cm per year, while the corresponding eastern part is travelling southward at the same rate - giving a relative movement of 40 cm per year. The plates are grinding against one another as they rotate in opposite directions. There is a prediction of a 15% chance of a 8 to 9 scale earthquake within 30 years... While the mountains of South Island have come about due to uplift as the Pacific plate climbs up over the Australasian plate, as well as grinding against it, for North Island the opposite is true. The buckling and folding of the plates as they lift (at 10 cm per year) produce majestic mountains, and quite a bit of volcanic activity in North Island, though virtually none in South Island. At the same time as all this is happening, ice glaciers have carved up the freshly forming mountains into massive valleys and huge fresh water lakes - glaciers that covered virtually the whole of South Island less than 20,000 years ago, to a depth that left only the tops of the highest mountains showing. Thus the many fiords, as well as the very deep fresh water lakes.

 Gorgeous place, just like the old Marlboro ads, and never mind the midges.