HOW TO

Tips on how to use INSTAGRAM…

Join our instagram community for travel inspiration around the world

Scenic guests are some of the world’s great explorers, embarking on adventures around the world and enjoying life changing enriching experiences.

Guests are also our greatest advocates and users of social media in all its formats. Posts from our members around the world are inspiring and educating other travellers, to the wonders of their unique journeys. Experience the joy of sharing your special Scenic moments with your family and friends (and us) – all in an instant.

Scenic is growing its Instagram account and we’d love you to become part of our community. Instagram is a great way to share your beautiful holiday snaps and to be inspired for your next adventure.

Here are our tips to learn about and make the most of Instagram:

A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO INSTAGRAM

STEP 1. Get the App Simply download the Instagram app via the App Store (iPhone) or Google Play Store (Android).

STEP 2.Create account Choose to sign up using your phone number, email address or Facebook account.

STEP 3. Follow your favourite accounts Click the search icon in the top left to find your friends, family or favourite brands. Search “scenic_uk" to follow our UK account and scenic.eclipse for all things Scenic Eclipse.

STEP 4. Create your post Instagram is an entirely visual platform, its purpose is to enable users to share images or videos. On Facebook, you may choose to post 100 photos in an album. On Instagram, you need to be more selective about which photos you post – narrow it down to just your favourite photos from your holiday to post.

Open the App. Click the “+” icon in the bottom centre of your screen to open the photo library on your phone. Select your choose photo or video and click “Next” in the top right.

This will take you to the edit screen, where you can choose to add a “Filter” or “Edit” your photo. Alternatively, click “Next” again to skip.

Now add a caption, tag people and add a location. Don’t forget to tag @scenic_uk and @scenic.eclipse and use the hashtag #scenicwonder in your caption!

When you are ready to publish, click “Share” in the top right.

And you have posted.

Follow us on Instagram @scenic_uk and @scenic.eclipse for the latest travel inspiration, and share your own Scenic travel experiences with #scenicwonder and #sceniceclipse

We always love hearing from our guests, seeing what you have experienced and sharing your favourite moments. Here’s some images that may inspire you to use Instagram and be part of the global sharing community.

An ode to the omnipotent

The beating heart of our country shines bright

“I saw in my mind a landscape of illuminated stems that, like dormant seeds in a dry desert, quietly wait until darkness falls, under a blazing blanket of southern stars, to bloom with gentle rhythms of light.” - Bruce Munro

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Deep inside Australia’s Red Centre lies its beating heart. The vital organ is not small, or soft, and certainly not fragile. Instead, it is enormous, resolute, and beats to the rhythm of a sacred, ancient beat, 600 million years old. Nearly three decades ago, Bruce Munro, a British artist, camped outside Uluru and recalls feeling this pulsation, one he described as “a charge in the air”, an incredible energy that seemed to radiate from the red desert.

Uluru, to the untrained eye, is a gigantic monolith. The scientists call it an inselberg, meaning an isolated hill or mountain rising abruptly from a plain. To the Anangu people, the traditional owners of the land, it is a living being, a keeper of their traditions, carrying tales of the ancestry of the world etched in stone, without which they’d be lost. To take even a fragment of the holy rock is to invite a lifetime of bad luck – the curse of Uluru.

Rising 348 metres above the burnished red desertscape and running 3.5 kilometres long, Uluru astounds with its immensity. But what is visible to the naked eye is, quite literally, just the tip of the iceberg. Two-thirds of the rock is said to lie beneath the earth.

A monument like that deserves to be worshiped and respected with the Field of Light Uluru exhibition a fitting tribute. Like the veins of the life-giving organ, 50,000 swaying spindles topped with frosted glass globes, harness the sun’s energy to illuminate an area the size of four football fields.

Designed by Bruce Munro, the spectacular light exhibition is known as 'Tili Wiru Tjuta Nyakutjaku' by the locals, meaning ‘looking at lots of beautiful lights’. Indeed it is a lot of beautiful lights. The solar-powered stems and bulbs were specially brought in from the United Kingdom, and it took 40 people six weeks to install them.

During the day, the sun transforms the ancient rock with its every move, from umber brown in the afternoon to flaming red in the evening. When dusk begins to drape the Red Centre in her cloak of velvety darkness, so thick you couldn’t see your hand if you

held it before your face, you can still feel its palpable, spiritual aura.

As night sets in, several million stars in the clear skies proudly shine down upon Uluru, revealing an imposing silhouette of the great guardian of the land. While closer to the ground, the iridescent otherworldly exhibition pays a silent homage, pleasantly glimmering like fairy wings from a scene straight out of A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream.

LET'S GO… Visit Uluru on our Grand Australia Escorted Tour

PIOPIOTAHI (Milford Sound)

A sound, a fiord, an ethereal wonder

That Rudyard Kipling called Milford Sound the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ is a well-known fact. But here’s something you probably didn’t know. The incredibly beautiful Milford Sound is not a sound at all! It is in fact a fjord (or fiord as the Kiwis prefer it). Milford Sound was formed during the ice age by melting glacial ice carving the dramatic, craggy landscape over millions of years. By definition, this process of glaciation makes Milford Sound a fiord. A sound, on the other hand, is formed when sea water floods a river valley. But, as the Bard famously said, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" and Milford Sound is breathtaking no matter what you choose to call it. Distant snow-capped peaks, lush green cliffs, dark waters several hundred metres in depth, and gushing waterfalls that create wondrous two tier rainbows. Incidentally, Milford Sound has served as the backdrop for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, and its famous Stirling Falls were made even more famous by Wolverine, Hugh Jackman, leaping off it in X-Men Origins.

Māori tribes discovered the ancient wonder a thousand years before Europeans, when they began frequenting the waters to fish and scour for precious pounamu, a greenstone revered by Māori tribes. They believe Milford Sound was carved by the powerful toki (an axe-like tool) of the atua (godly figure) Tu-te-raki-whanoa, empowered by a powerful prayer.

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As per another legend, Māori hero, Māui came from his homeland in Hawaiki to challenge the goddess of death, Hine-nui-te-pō, to a duel and win eternal life for humankind. He brought with him a companion in the form of a piopio, a now extinct native bird. Tragically, Māui failed in his quest and was crushed between the thighs of the goddess. His heartbroken friend flew into Milford Sound in mourning, giving it the Māori name, Piopiotahi, meaning a single piopio.

Milford Sound’s intriguing aura extends beyond the mythical world, and the unique composition of its waters makes it well worthy of the eighth wonder title. The fiord is one of the wettest places on the planet. Frequent rainfall washes down tannins from the surrounding cliffs into the waters, giving it the dark, opaque appearance. Below this layer of tannins is a layer of fresh rainwater, and below this freshwater lie the saline waters of the Tasman Sea. This unique composition has helped the growth of rare black coral (that are, ironically, not black at all), just 10 metres below the surface, otherwise only found deep in the ocean. To truly experience the spirit of Milford Sound, in all its geological and mystical glory, take a cruise. An extraordinary experience, a cruise through the fiord will reveal to you herds of sunning fur seal, pods of leaping dolphins, flocks of cheeky kea and rookeries of Fiordland crested penguin or ‘tawaki’. On a sunny day, the mirror-like waters reflect every detail of the sky and the mountains around. When it rains, the fiord is filled with magnificent waterfalls everywhere you look.

If you choose to take an overnight cruise, you will have the chance to witness Milford Sound in all its moods. Relax on the deck as the anchor is lowered and watch the sun disappear behind the mountains, drenching the fiord in a divine alpenglow, and wake up at first light to watch the mist eerily shroud the water’s surface.

LET'S GO… See Milford Sound on our Royal New Zealand Escorted Tour