Fiordland

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Friday, 7th September

We hired a car - a lovely white Mazda Familia which is gonna be our transport for the next 24days - taking us all the way to Auckland. We drove to Te Anau last night and are staying in a really nice (quiet) hostel in what seems to be a town stuck in the middle of nowhere. Though it does have all the essentials!

Just spent the day kayaking on Milford Sound. Technically it is a fiord because it was carved out by glaciers - as was most of the south - Queenstown etc..hence the reason eveything is so flat between the mountains. We were looking out for wildlife, but there wasn't as much as we had hoped - it is penguin season and we only saw one but didn't manage to photograph it! We have one bad photo of a seal, which are apparently very common (!) and that's about it. However there are some fantastic photos of the fiord itself and also of the bus journey down through the Southern Alps that takes about 2hrs from Te Anau.

Tomorrow we are going to watch the rugby (7am ko) and drive back to Queenstown, stay there for the night to watch the first All Blacks game before heading up to the glaciers on Sunday.

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Photos

The road to Milford
This is an example of the scenery on the way to Milford Sound from Te Anau

Fi and Kea
Our kayaking guide trying to feed the New Zealand Kea (a type of parrot) an orange. They need constant stimulation so can be very destructive - however they do like to catch a ride on the top of passing cars!

The Gruesom Twosome
James and I on the water at Milford Sound

Waterfalls
Usually when it has been raining - about 70% of the sides of the cliffs are streaming with water like this..