Queenstown & Milford Sound

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We arrived in Queenstown mid afternoon and parked near the town centre so we could have a look around before finding somewhere to stay that night.

Queenstown is nestled on the shores of crystal clear Lake Wakatipu and is a popular and quite famous ski resort when in season. It is also famous for bungy jumping; commercial bungy jumping was born in the 1980’s when AJ Hackett opened the bungy jump site at the Kawarau Bridge just outside Queesntown. We visited the bridge while we were in Queensland as we heard you can drop by and watch people jump, still feeling a little Xtreme after our skydive we were tempted to do one ourselves but our budget can only stretch so far so we took enjoyment from watching normally macho men turn to 5 year old girls just before they jumped. We also found out that the oldest person to bungy off this bridge was 94.

We had to drive a little out of town to find somewhere to stay that night and even then it was a questionable triangle of gravel land just off a main road but we had little other choice so parked up, cooked pasta and then went to bed.

The next day we went back into the town for more of an explore, there happened to be a Jazz Festival on while we were there so there was live music playing on a small green and a crafts market set up by the lake shore. The lake itself is beautiful, even though we'd been in New Zealand almost a month by now we were still astonished every time we saw a lake by the cleanness of the water. Lake Wakatipu was completely clear, even in quite deep parts you could see right to the bottom.

We spent the rest of the day enjoying the music in the sunshine and planning our next move to see Milford Sound, we decided to set off early the next day as it's a very long drive so we'd probably only get half way there in one days driving. That night we went back to our triangle of gravel again.

We were up and ready to go early the next morning, our destination was a small town called Te Anau which is also the last place you can fill up on petrol before the long drive to Milford Sound. On the way we went via a beautiful lake, as usual it was crystal clear and surrounded by stunning mountains which were mirrored in the water. The weather by now was lovely so we stopped for a while and enjoyed the sunshine before carrying on to Te Anau. When we arrived we found it quite a strange place, there seemed to be absolutely no one around, it was the middle of the day and along the main road of shops there were hardly any people. Because we had made it there in good time we decided to just fill up with petrol and carry on with the drive to Milford Sound and hopefully find some place to stay the night before it got dark.

There were several camping spots along the way, none were free, but we didn't have much choice this time so we paid to stay on a small site near a river. There were thousands of sandflies because we were close to water which made it difficult to cook and they managed to get in the van and bite us all through the night. Also before it got dark that evening Luke had his first hair cut of the trip and now looks like the 23 year old that he is instead of the 40 something man some people had believed him to be.

The next morning we set off early to complete the rest of the journey to Milford Sound. It started out a little cloudy and as we got deeper into the Fiordland National Park it became darker and much colder, we went through a very long tunnel which takes the road through a huge mountain and when we came out the other side we thought we'd accidentally driven through a wardrobe and entered Narnia. The snow covered the road, mountains, trees and everything in sight and was falling quite heavily. There were many signs along the road which read 'avalanche danger zone - no stopping' so we drove along as safely as we could and about 25 minutes later we finally arrived at Milford Sound.

Milford Sound, located at the northern most end of Fiordland National Park, has become a national icon for New Zealand. In places it is as much as 400 metres deep, it has pristine landscapes, and remote and rugged beauty, it is actually a fiord, rather than a sound. A river formed valley subsequently flooded by the sea is called a sound, however, Milford Sound was formed by the erosive effects of a glacier and is technically a fiord. The reason it was named a Sound is because the Scandanavian who discovered it didn't posses a word for how it was formed, the closest description that he knew of was a Sound.

We had booked a boat trip for 2pm so went for something to eat to kill sometime before fully exploring what we had come so far to see. The weather still wasn't fantastic but we had been assured that many people say it is more beautiful when it is raining a little as the waterfalls are stronger and the clouds reflect on the lake. When we finally set off on our trip the rain had eased and there was some sun poking through the cloud. It was every bit as spectacular as we'd imagined it would be, our boat took us past the waterfalls, through the mountains and right up to the edge of the lake where it becomes the sea, it was really choppy here but when the boat turned back around to face the lake again the views were beautiful.

We were out on the boat for about two hours, it was such a breathtaking trip. By the time we got back to Chats, we'd been there nearly all day and when I pressed the key fob to unlock the doors nothing happened. We manually unlocked the doors and tried the ignition. Nothing. We immediately thought we'd left the fridge on because the rental company had warned us that it drains the battery. We couldn't have found ourselves in such a predicament in a more isolated place, other than the road we had come in on the only other way out is by helicopter.

We called the AA and they said we should try and find someone to jump start the engine before we asked them to come and help us as it would be very costly to get them all the way out there. The only place we could think of was the cafe we had been in earlier that day, feeling pretty stupid for asking a waiter for mechanical assistance we skulked up to the counter and explained our problem. Without even saying a word, the waiter reached down to a shelf and lifted out a battery with two jump leads. Apparently it happens all the time, people put their lights on when entering the long tunnel on the way in and forget to turn them off afterward because they are so taken by the snow/views, we had done the same. We were so relieved, but still pretty annoyed the waitor charged us 10 dollars for his help. Cheeky.

After that we drove all the way back to Queenstown. We were up early again the next day to start our drive to Christchurch with a few stops on the way.

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