Te Anau - Milford Sound - Queenstown

This was one of the best days ever!

We had to walk down to the cafe where the bus would meet us, I got there nice and early and bought myself breakfast - scrambled egg on toast - yum and such a treat!

The bus arrived and it was fairly empty so we all got seats to ourselves which was good as it was at least 6-7 hours sat on the bus today!

Q our driver was really neat he stopped all the time for photos! The road to Milford Sound was just as amazing as Milford Sound itself! At this time of the year all of the lupins are out (I mentioned them in my other entry) and they are everywhere! It was so beautiful. The mountains were all lush green and there was still snow on the mountain caps! This area is called Fiordland National Park! I was astounded by the sheer sides of the mountains, they were literally vertical! And most surprisingly many of them have trees growing out of them! The Milford Road is one of the most dangerous roads in the world. In winter avalanches are common and can shut the road down for 4-5 days stranding people in Te Anau! Rain causes tree avalanches because the trees are hanging on by small roots!

The homer tunnel is freaky! It goes through the middle of the mountain and is seriously dark! Q started playing this song which went; 'hello, is anyone there' over and over again! We were all going ooohhh as we went through as well! On the other side as on the previous side the mountains were sheer cliffs! Explorers actually use these cliffs for practice when preparing to climb Everest and K2!

We were heading down from this point to the sound. It is a fiord as you can guess from the name of the national park. It was first spotted by Captain Cook (again) and he thought it was a bay! Then a welsh sealing captain came upon it one day in rough weather and sailed in to gain protection. He named it Milford Haven after the welsh town, as it went so far inland the name changed to Milford Sound. A Sound is formed by erosion after many years which Milford Sound wasn't! Milford Sound is actually a fiord which is created by glaciers!

We arrived at Milford Town and went straight to the ferry terminal and boarded our boat. It was very nice, it was brand new and had wasn't very busy, it was only us really! They had free tea and coffe for us to! Milford Sound is so unbelievably spectacular, sheer cliffs dropping into the fiord and beautiful snow capped peaks, lush green vegetation and wildlife. We saw seals and dolphins! There are penguins but we didn't see any! We were really lucky as the weather was gorgeous and the scenery was stunning! The waterfalls were fantastic! They were either massive or just spray, the slight breeze would blow the spray waterfalls so that they fell in a completely different spot! Apparently we were only seeing a small part of many of the waterfalls as they came down huge mountains where we couldn't see!

I was sorry to get off the cruise it was so good! Back on the bus I asked if we were stopping for lunch now as I had been taking so many photos I hadn't bought anything on the boat! The boat was our lunch stop! So Q went back and got me a selection of 2 sandwiches for free! I only had one and gave the other to someone else!

On the way back we stopped at the Chasm which is a 20 minute loop walk. It was amazing here we were in such mountainous areas and there was a tiny bit of rainforest and in the midst was a waterfall which had shaped out some amazing rock formations! It was all like bubbles in the rocks and there was a rainbow where the water was falling! This was like being on another planet!

Our next stop was the otherside of the Homer Tunnel where some snow was still left - very icy though! We walked to it and there was an ice tunnel formed by a small stream! Walking back to the bus a Kea which is like a parrot landed on one of the cars and started pecking at the car roof! It was hilarious, this poor lady was wondering what on earth all these people were taking photos of her car for! She finally got out but the Kea tried pecking her!

We pretty much drove straight back from here only stopping twice for toilets and food!

Back at the YHA in Queenstown I checked in and headed up to the supermarket. On the way down I walked past Fergburger and bumped into a few people. I ended up having one of the girls chips as she was stuffed after her burger! I chatted to some people that had been on my bus from Wellington to Nelson and that also went kayaking in Abel Tasman.

Back at the hostel I got ready and met the guys off of the bus in Altitude. We didn't stay there long as it was dead and moved on to World Bar where I saw a few people from previous buses. We stayed and some of the others had teapots! They sell teapots full of cocktails! They didn't have any I liked so I opted out! We stayed in World Bar then and danced the night away!