Milford Sound and Lake Wanaka

Oceania » New Zealand » South Island » Wanaka
October 2nd 2009

Published: October 17th 2009

Edit Blog Post

the kemps

The journey begins

We left very early to start the journey to Milford Sound, unfortunately in the rush, a tragedy occurred, Ted, the turtle that I bought as a replacement for Barclay must have dropped out of the van and his final resting place was Te Anau - bye Ted. Luckily Tel decided to drive and I was very grateful, its basically a twisty turny road round hairpin bends and tunnels through the southern Alps, amazing but also nauseating in a car! We made it just in time to get the afternoon boat and were talked into buying the special winter package of barbeque lunch and a trip to the underwater observatory - why haven we learned!! The lunch was interesting but the boat trip was pretty cool. It was a very misty wet day at Milford sound which gave it a very menacing and eerie feel, I’m sure its totally different when the sun is out. We saw a lot of waterfalls on the road there and back and also on the boat - water everywhere! After a short trip to the underwater observatory we were back in the van and legging it to our next stop Lake wanaka. The driving distances are

It all got very impressive

nowhere near as far in New Zealand but its very easy to underestimate how long it will take because of all the twists and turns. We arrived in wanaka just before dusk and even decided it was warm enough for the awning - cue gale force winds and storm warnings - brilliant! My tooth has been playing up for ages and since we have been in the cold its got worse so we found a dentist and managed to get an appointment for the following day so we took a trip to Wanakas Puzzling World which has all kind of optical illusions and a giant maze. The maze was harder than we anticipated and we ended up using an emergency exit to get out before we went nuts!! I ended up having to have a filling removed and then re-done and so after that, dribbling somewhat we went for a big three hour walk around the lake - Its all about walking in NZ - we weren really walkers before but you haven really got a choice, its all so pretty you can refuse! We left Wanaka and drove past Lake Hawea and across to the west coast, through Haast,