New Zealand Part 24 - Milford Sound

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There’s a mouse in our house (van)!!

It took ages to drive back to Queenstown through Glenorchy, and then even longer through the centre of the south island to Milford Sound - all in all a drive that took all day! (It didn’t help that I wanted us to stop for photos of every bit of scenery that “could have been in the film - lord of the rings that is if you hadn’t guessed). We had a decision to make on our drive to Milford, stay at Manapouri where there was a power station for Nath to visit or go to Te Anue where there was slightly more to do in town and it was 20km’s nearer to Milford Sound. In the end we decided we’d go to Manapouri, not only for a possible visit to the power station but because the campsite advertised that it had its own collection of Morris Minors (so I was sold) and was a “quirky campsite”.

As we arrived I could see why it was quirky, everything was pretty much the original buildings from the 1960’s (with a hint of Dutch architecture to its rentable buildings). All the houses you could rent were miniature versions of full sized houses which looked really cool. The kitchen had the old bold 60’s wallpaper on it (faded by now) and newspaper cuttings from the family who had owned the place for the last 50 years. The toilets were wonderful if you needed to sit and “read” for a bit as they all had cartoons cut out and stuck on the walls of the loos. We’d arrived in the beginnings of thick fog over the shore line so couldn’t see any of the great scenery but could definitely feel a chill in the air. So Nath and I enjoyed an easy evening in front the campsite TV (and heater), and while I watched the TV Nath read a brochure I’d found on the power station (as he hadn’t decided if he was gonna go yet) but as it held all the technical information in it, by the time he had read it all, a trip to see the station seemed a bit pointless especially as he had done the Hoover dam tour in the states. So we decided the next morning we’d have a look around before heading of to Te Anue.

By the next morning the mist had lifted and we could finally see the Sounds in front of us. It was spooky and beautiful at the same time, with huge green covered mounds jetting out from the water. After a quick look round the Morris Minor collection (more like a graveyard, poor things, covered in cobwebs and not being used - I’d have easily posted one home, lol), we headed off for a wander around Manapouri, which we knew was small, but didn’t anticipate how small. By the time we had passed a couple of shops, small church and a hairdresser that was it! (I’ve hard farts that have lasted longer distances!!). We went for a walk along the beach front, as to get to the surrounding Sounds, you needed to hire a boat or pay a stupid amount of money to be taken out on a cruise. It was pretty cold and windy so we didn’t walk for long and as there was nothing else to keep us there we headed to Te Anue with the idea of having a look around and then heading as far as we could up towards Milford Sound before it got dark.

On arriving at Te Anue, it was a tourist Mecca by comparison with Manapouri; I really don’t know what else the locals do for work if it isn’t working in the tourist industry. Loads of shops to buy bits of tat, yup you guessed it, jade shops and then a good selection of pubs and restaurants. As always Nath and I used the local library to get some internetting done (we seem to do a lot of internetting but never seem to get up to date with the blog! We do lots of useful research and planning stuff as well but I just don’t know where the time goes?? How did people travel before the internet??). We didn’t sit for that long as a couple of guys who had been living in their sleeper car sat in the room and stunk so bad of BO, one girl had to go and sit outside! And we weren’t far behind her (Another tick for buying Elton and not a sleeper van). Plus it was getting late and we still potentially had a long drive ahead of us.

The problem with Milford Sound is that there is only one road up and back which has no petrol stops on it so you have to make sure you have enough petrol for the 250km journey. There are only DOC sites along the way and no accommodation once you get to Milford itself (it’s just a port). So we decided that we would stop off at one of the first DOC sites for the night and then make our way up gradually the next day as we didn’t need to be at Milford till 4pm to catch our over night cruise. What a nice leisurely drive that would be and a lovely camp over by the river that evening we thought. Finding the DOC site was easy enough, the toilet was even fresh smelling (for a while) so we picked our little spot under the trees next to the river and settled in for the night. Now what an interesting night (and not for a good reason -wink wink).

I had always taken longer to fall asleep in Elton than Nath, I guess since my spider crushing incident in Portage I was a bit wary of sleeping in the van. As I was dozing off I heard a bang on the roof a couple of times and as Nath didn’t stir at all I thought maybe I imagined it or perhaps it was a van next door shutting its windows etc. Weirdly a short time after this, a carrier bag with bread in it in our food cupboard started rustling every now and then. Again it was a windy evening and the vent was open so I again assumed it was just the wind. However as I lay there it seemed to be intermittent and every time I got up to look with the torch and listen to the exact location it stopped - now wind doesn’t do that, so I was beginning to assume we had some kind of “visitor”. Just as I thought the rustling had stopped, I looked again with the torch and was surprised to see a little head and big ears looking out at me - it was a frickin mouse!!!

I woke Nath up at this point and told him we had a mouse in the van; he didn’t believe me until he banged on the cupboard and heard him squeak and run off down the side of the van! There's a bloody mouse in our van!! I know!! We spent the next few hours trying to figure out how the hell he had got in and more importantly how we were gonna get rid of him. He had already helped himself to our pasta bag and a sachet of angel delight - bastard!. He was not only a mouse with a sweet tooth ( I love angel delight), but a noisy one too, once he knew that we were aware of him he didn’t bother sneaking around anymore and ran around the roof cavity and sides of the van with what sounded like hob nail boots on!

“I see a mouse
Where?
There in your cupboard
Where in my cupboard?
Right there
A little mouse with hobnail boots on
Well I declare
Going thump thumpedy thump in our van!”

In the end we did our best to move the food from the cupboards to places where we hoped he couldn’t smell or reach. So it now being 2 am we were stuffing food into the microwave and the “tea” cupboard that was by my head as I slept ( we still had to duck tape it up so that he couldn’t get in, but it was the least accessible). But he had a keen nose and as we settled back to sleep I heard him making his way through the backs of the other cupboards and trying to get to the tea drawer. Now I’m not afraid of mice etc, I think they’re very cute, but one falling on my head from the cupboard in the middle of the night I think is enough to scare anyone. So I slept the rest of the night, turned away from the cupboard and my head under the covers (good thing it was a cold night). He also seemed to be a ninja mouse with stealth powers as he seemed to be appearing in two different places at the same time - turns out he had a bloody friend with him!! Not that I think they were close as they had a little squeak off fight before one ran off. We finally got some intermittent sleep after deciding there wasn’t really anything more we could do right now..

Next morning we awoke to scratching and chewing noises above our heads. I had really hoped he would have buggered off by now but it seems daylight wasn’t that threatening. So we had only one choice left, rather than enjoy a leisurely drive up to Milford Sound we would have to drive back into Te Anue and get some traps. The last thing we needed with needing to sell Elton was a free pet that ate everything. The annoying thing was that as we were freedom camping the only clean crockery etc was in the cupboards that the mouse had happily done the “krypton factor” over so we didn’t know if anything was clean. So cereal was eaten out of the old bowls in the sink and we headed into town again to sort it all out. However just to add to the situation, as we drove back towards town the exhaust started to make a horrible rattling noise. We knew months ago when Elton first broke down that the exhaust was rusty and figured it would go at some point, hopefully after we had sold him but we had completely forgotten about it until now. Seems all that driving over gravely roads had made it lose, so we drove back as gently as we could so not to loose the whole thing. Great now we would need this fixed at a price, in a garage in the middle of nowhere that probably wouldn’t have the parts and probably couldn’t be done for a few days!!........ Turns out however after thinking the worst we found a little garage who would weld it up straight away for $50 (less than £25)- sweet as!!

So we entertained ourselves for an hour or so and soon we were off again, mouse traps bought and ready to be set once we were at our destination of Milford Sound port. The drive up to Milford Sound, as I said, is one road in and out which has lots to stop and see on the way. Obviously we now didn’t have the time to take pictures as we had about 3 hours to get 2.5hours of driving done, so we were off, as fast as poor Elton could go, with our shiny new welded exhaust joint and no sound from our sweet toothed hob nail boot wearing mouse. We over took a couple of coaches on the way up, which meant we could relax as I recognised the coach tour name as the group joining us for the over night cruise from Milford. They were an 18-30’s group who the booking lady I spoke to the day before had warned me about, in case it would bother us “oldies”, but I pointed out we (well me) are still in that age bracket so I thought we’d be ok!! As we approached Milford I started seeing signs for accommodation - The liars, the filthy stinking tourist information liars my precious - we had been told there was no accommodation in Milford Sound, so thus had had to book an overnight cruise - which wasn’t cheap!!

Oh well, we got our stuff ready and even had time in the end for a cuppa with the only clean cups left over from the mouse Olympics, locked Elton up and hopped that our mouse traps would have something in them other than the chocolate bait when we returned. I was looking forward to the boat trip as I had enjoyed “the rock” over night boat in the Bay of Islands, but as we boarded the boat to join our fellow passengers, the apparent 18-30’s group turned out to be more like 18-20’s. Now I consider us to be pretty “shizzle me nizzle and down with the kids,…. init” but at times this touring has been making us feel very old and this was one of those times as I struggled with the amount of youngsters in one room. Nath and I picked out our spot in the lounge area to hear the safety announcements and have our soup starter (to warm us up apparently - the heating was on too - it was a bloody boiling day, what were they thinking?). Funnily enough, with all the noise everyone else in the room seemed to be making, the two young foetuses that we were sat with were fairly mute. It would seem something about our faces puts people off sitting with us; maybe my smile comes across as more of a grimace and Nath’s as that of an escaped lunatic (Mandy - perv more like it).

Anyway we set our stuff up in our bunk room, which had a little porthole looking outside and a beautiful “art instillation” of squished sand flies on glass - nice, just like being in Elton and headed out into the Sounds and soon started adding layers of clothing as the sun got lower in the sky- I can kind of see why they had the heating on now and served soup as a starter. That didn’t stop the odd poser who refused to admit they were cold wearing only a t-shirt with their nipples pointing out - prats!! (Nath was disappointed the young girls weren’t doing the same). We used to call the freshers in Swansea f-f-f-freshers because it took them the first week of being at uni clubbing in very little to realise how cold Swansea was in September. Needless to say I’ve always been cold and Nath has always had the cohunes to admit that he needed a coat rather than walk the streets with his hands wedged under this arm pits in an attempt to look warm - so sad so very sad….anyway I digress…..

We gently sailed down the Sounds and they were impressive indeed, but we both had that feeling of being a little blasé about the scenery again. I had looked forward to this for ages and I guess it wasn’t quite as huge as I was expecting what with seeing all the other scenery around NZ. After a couple of hours we set anchor and got split into activity groups, the choices being kayaking, small boat or swim. This was done by a show of hands and you literally could have split the group by age rather than water activity preference. The entire younger crowd wanted to kayak and the older ones, including Nath and myself, decided to go in the small boat. I had wanted to kayak but had noticed the number of sand flies about and remembered how knackered we felt after the full day kayak in Abel Tasman so decided a little boat would make a nice change. The boat trip was nice, the guide telling us about the local area and flora etc which was interesting enough but the best part was when one of the foreign tourists asked what the difference was between a glass - i- er and a glace - i-er!!! I’d have helped the tour guide try and explain with my helpful “same shit different shovel” but I don’t think it would have helped. The comedy moment was kind of spoilt by the sudden onslaught of flies that attacked the boat. It was like being mugged; they were everywhere and left everyone else alone except me. I had prepared my feet so they left them alone, however they have the amazing ability to find the one area you haven’t covered, this time namely my forehead!!!

Back on the big boat Nath and I finally got to have a shower after not washing for over 24 hours, which made us feel much more alive and perhaps explained the lack of company when we sat down before. Unfortunately dinner soon followed and when we sat down to eat we were joined by Mr and Mrs Dull As, winners of the regional, personality bypass league 2009. Wow Nath and I couldn’t eat our dinner quick enough just to get away from them. It’s not like they talked to us at all, there was not even eye contact, no polite chit chat, not even any recognition of us being there, which meant that we overheard all their weird conversations, which really didn’t help their cause. The food was lovely though and lots of it, roast pork with all the trimmings and crumble for pudding mmmmmm. So with dinner over and indigestion about to set in, Nath and I went out to the top deck to watch the sun set. I didn’t last outside for long as it was now bloody freezing (thank god the heating had been on all day - I’ll never moan again!) Unlike the Bay of Islands boat trip this trip was cold and a little adventurless, as after the water activates that was really it for the night. The bar was open if you wanted to spend a small fortune for beer and a selection of board games were available, not that anyone wanted to play or interact with us, so the 2 player plus games were out. In the end we settled for a game of chess and a couple of beers to while away the time.

Just before bed, we stepped outside to see the stars which were really bright but not the brightest we had seen by far on this trip. The young group we were travelling with were drinking out on the deck and I think exchanging trumps (does that show my age or what) and ring tones or something. We got into bed about 11pm in the hope of sleeping till 6am ready for sunrise (breakfast was due as 7:45). I don’t know about Nath but I spent most of the night desperate for the loo. As with all these trips if you don’t pay for the expensive room then the toilet is always at the furthest point from you. I got to about 4am when I couldn’t hold it any longer and made the cold journey outside to the toilets at the other end of the boat.. It was eerie with no one around and in the pitch black all you could hear was the odd splash of water and bird cry. When my alarm went off at 6am I really didn’t want to get up, but hey we’re only on this trip once so I wanted to see the sunrise. By 6:30, both Nath and I were up and ready and waiting for the sun. It was still really dark, which was a bit weird but we figured any minute the sky would start to light up. Nope it pretty much got to breakfast time when everyone else was up, before the light appeared and even then it wasn’t that great due to the steep sides of the sound. (Wish I’d known that last night).

Breakfast was good, we even had someone sit with us for a brief moment and make conversation, but that was only because it was the only table left. We were due back in the port at 9:30am so a quick wiz down to the Tasman Sea and back up the Sound and we were ready to disembark. Being tired and a little bitter at feeling old on this trip, I played the helpful game of guess the year of birth as the foetuses got off the boat “91, 94, 90, 92, 92…” you get the idea. I was just about to say to Nath “hey when you were at school they were…” but he didn’t let me finish!!! One other thing I had noticed on the trip is this was the first time in ages we had been on a trip with American people and without wanting it to I’m afraid the accent just made me want to scrape my nails down a blackboard!!! I just couldn’t stand it; maybe it was what they were talking about?................ No, no it was just that they were talking - hey if I’m getting old then I’m gonna get xenophobic too!!!

Once off the boat we returned to Elton a little nervous at what we would find in the mouse trap and what we would do with it if we found something. Turns out we had nothing to worry about as there was nothing there! So had our mouse evacuated when we left the campsite, or had he died of starvation being trapped in our roof - I guess we’ll never know. That will be a present for the new owner! Anyway we headed back down the Milford road, this time being able to take our time and take lots of shots. Yet again though we were feeling a little unimpressed with things that we really should have been. Perhaps we won’t be till we look back later and think how massive it all was. Along side photo taking I spent ages trying to find a Kea to feed, even though the signs say don’t, as they read as being such funny little birds, mountain parrots to be precise. The sign called them cheeky which made me start singing

“We are the cheeky birds,
You are the stupid tourists,
You want to feed us food,
Even though you shouldn’t do” etc etc etc

But I didn’t see one; I was most disappointed, especially as I was waving my sacrificial sandwich in the air to tempt them down. We did however come across a very friendly bird on a walk we took through some woods. The little robin sized fellow just jumped out it front of us and then started dancing round our feet! Unfortunately I did have my sandwich with me then to reward him for his amazing moon walking. After a couple of hours, some lunch and photo stops we were back in Te Anue at a camp site, just in time to get all our crockery washed before we slumped into bed for a quiet nights sleep......tomorrow bye bye west coast, hello central Otago.

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Photos

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The poor Morris Minor graveyard

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What a great set of bums

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Sit, stay..good wooden dog

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Manapouri vista

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Mandy's arty shot

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Spot the difference!!

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I get to drive Elton for once - Nath must have been tired, drunk or insane weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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Echo.............

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A miny glacier in the middle of the Milford road

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Our boat in the foreground of Mitre Peak

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Not as warm as it looks!

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Our beds for the night