Advertisement
Published: November 17th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Wednesday 8th November Laura - Today we went for a tour around Milford Sound on the Fiord Lands, and also experienced all four seasons of weather! It was an early start as we had to make the 100Km drive from Te Anau to the sounds. The drive was very scenic, passing through wooded valleys and snow capped mountains. It was a grey and wet morning, but we weren't too bothered about this because apparently the fiords look spectacular even in the rain.
As we drove up into the mountains it started to snow quite heavily. We were slightly concerned because we didn't want to get stuck in Milford Sound for the night. Also because we hadn't carried snow chains with us as advised in the tourist leaflet... Anyway, we passed through Homer Tunnel (a very creepy dark tunnel carved into the rock) in the mountains and came out of the other side, where there was no snow! Very bizarre.
We arrived in Milford Sound, where the rain was clearing, and boarded our little boat for the 2 hour cruise across the Fiords and out to the Tasman Sea. It was as spectacular as promised, we can understand why
everyone recommends it. There were huge snow capped mountains surrounding us, covered in lush forest, with hundreds of waterfalls dotted here and there. It reminded me a bit of the Yangzi river cruise that we did in China. Although the weather here was slightly different to China! It didn't matter that the sun wasn't out though because the rain had made the waterfalls more powerful and there were clouds swirling around the mountain peaks, making the scene look eery and cool! It was very impressive and so we took many obligatory photos! In fact we were so keen in the photo-taking that our cameras almost got ruined when the skipper decided to soak us all by driving under a waterfall!
After our tour we drove back at a leisurely pace, enjoying the scenery and playing a game of 'guess the weather in the next 20 Km'. When we left Milford Sound the sun was out, within a few Km it was pouring with rain, then came the snow, then there was hailstones! Back in Te Anau the skies were blue and it was fairly hot! We also stopped en route to look at a cool Chasm where there were
around a million tour buses.
We stocked up on food in Te Anau then made our way to the log cabin we'd booked for the night. This place is absolutely gorgeous and possibly the nicest place we've stayed on our trip so far. There are 5 small cabins set on a farm overlooking Lake Manapouri and the distant Southern Alps. The cabin has a log burner, and a lovely little balcony. It is very quiet and idyllic. I don't ever want to leave! We spent the afternoon collecting wood, reading on the balcony, then had a lovely dinner and bottle of wine on our balcony, with the log fire roaring inside! As we are in the middle of nowhere, and so close to the Antarctic, when the stars came out, it was absolutely amazing. I have never seen so many stars in my life, and they were ridiculously bright, and literally 'twinkling'. It was beautiful. Unfortunately it was a bit nippy to stand outside admiring them for long though so we settled for a hot chocolate in front of the fire before retiring for the night!
Thursday 9th November Paul - It's a hard life for
the intrepid twosome here in New Zealand. I awoke to Laura putting some logs on the fire and the smell of sausages sizzling on the frying pan. I climbed out of bed and grabbed my book and settled down for uninterrupted views of an alpine wonderland. This if the life!
Hours passed by and logs had to be placed onto fires. Chocolate had to be eaten. Books had to be read. Horses had to be patted. With all the physical exercise I was feeling peckish so we managed to cook ourselves another meal before getting back to our books.
Friday 10th November Paul - Obviously we were sad to leave our log cabin but I was excited about getting to Queenstown to do a bungy jump. I wasn't particularly excited about the town but the activities sound brilliant.
The drive over was truly memorably as we skimmed around Lake Wakatipu for about 40km with steep cliffs rising each side of the lake. Found a hostel a little way out of town and I dragged Laura out of the room straight away. I wasn't going to miss a moment of the glorious weather when there's
activities to do. Especially speeding down a hill in a luge!!!!
Took the gondola up to the top of Bobs Peak which had some breath taking views over the Lake but I was too excited about the luge. Basically you race down two 1km long tracks to the bottom of the hill! How exciting. Giggling like a child I dragged Laura to the start and bought 7 rides down. Spent the next hour going "Wheeeeeeeee" and "Stop cutting me up on the corners you git" before the fun unfortunately came to an end.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.22s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 19; qc: 92; dbt: 0.1066s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb