Day 7 - Queenstown - Milford Sound - Queenstown

Wednesday 20th June 2012

Woke to Ed's fire/police/nuclear disaster alarm on his iPhone at the ungodly hour of 5:30am to get ready for our 6:45am bus. Equates to 3:30am Sydney time, just to share the concept of that pain.

Almost Jurassic Park-like...

Our impending bus trip was to Milford Sound, the most visually dramatic and stunning fiord of the massive world heritage area called Fiordland that takes up the southwest corner of NZ. Voted best destination in NZ by Kiwis according to some statistic printed on most of the travel brochures to the area. Funny that. But it was supposed to be absolutely 'maguc' so we had booked in for the day trip. Coach trip around lake Wakatipu to the other side from Queenstown, where Fiordland started. Then a 2 hour cruise along the waterway out to the Tasman Sea. Then another coach trip back to Queenstown. 12 hours total.

Pounded out the door and down to bus stop just on time. Bus full of eager weirdos. Who does this at this time? It wouldn't get light for another 2 hours.

Mitre Peak, 2000m above sea level straight
out of the water.

Obvious tourist in front of Homer
tunnel

Falling asleep to the dulcet tones of the Kiwi bus driver. Spoke exactly like AG with broken, meandering sentences. AG right at home. Ed rolling eyes. AG thought if only the man looked like himself as well as sounding like a Kiwi version of he, he would be the most excellent of individuals. Magical charm of such a style of speech is that everyone in the bus fell asleep almost instantly out of town.

9am and dawn breaks as we slowly reawaken. Dulcet Kiwi man on PA again. Something about deer and hunting and a lake. All rather interesting in a sandy-eyed kind of way. Nothing but grey coloured fields in the dawn light for another half an hour.

Stopover in Te Anau, a southerly village bent on irritating tourists with lacklustre service. Had to stock up on the day's food as there were no more stores anywhere on the trip. We panicked and bought about 12 kilos of snacks, sad looking supermarket sandwiches and drinks.

View from the river port at Milford

A little further down the street we popped into a little cafe, again with little surprise this place was as dead as the rest of the shops on the street, after ordering two coffees and asking for a bacon and egg Turkish roll, (a slight variation to their egg,bacon and cheese tostie) that had to be run past the chef as the women was a little confused to whether their calorie loaded option could be changed slightly, we jumped back on the bus and continued on to Milford. 

Falls at Milford

More waterfalls at Milford

On the way the coached stopped off at some amazing lookouts where we all piled off the bus, took some happy snaps at the soaring mountain, vast plains and magnificent waterfalls and streams (the water being completely blue and safe to drink) to then passing through a 2km man-made tunnel (Homer Tunnel) that went directly through the side of a mountain an out the other side. We were allowed out briefly before entering the tunnel to take a few more shots of the snowy cliffs before being told it was the most avalanche prone area in the region, after that lovely bit of info we all ran back in to the bus and strapped ourselfs in to our seats. 

The view down to Milford was just amazing, the bus we were in was equipped with a glass roof so we got a great view of what was above us while we were being chauffeured to our destination 

Sea lion hanging out in the Sound

Once we arrived at Milford we all scrambled on to a boat, feeling brave from all the skiing the day before we decided to take the "weather exposed" option and grabbed a seat on the in covered upper deck. (we did however, luck out with the weather, on average Milford sound gets a whopping 5 to 7m of rainfall a year!  But we got one of the 165 days a year that It doesn't rain) Once  the boat took off an got around the corner from the jetty we knew we had made the right decision, the view was just AMAZING! Picture a mountain as high as you can see to your left, now mirror that to your right and imagine them continuing on for about 3kms, add some of the most amazing waterfalls you can think of, put about 900m gap between them, fill that gap with deep blue water and plunk a boat in the water- bingo! On that boat was us.

The sign says it all ...

The cruise continued until we reached the opening to the Tasman Sea and came in sight of a lighthouse that as the Captain mentioned had been replaced 3 times due to severe weather, we were a little greatfull we  had indeed lucked out with the great weather for the trip.

on the way back to the jetty we Almost ran over three seals swimming and playing in the water alongside of the boat, they quickly became aware of our presence and started posing for photos. 

Thar be more scurvy water, arrr!

We got back to the docks again after being on the boat for the last two hours and jumped back on the bus again to the long trip back to Queenstown. We made a pitt stop at Te Anau again to get a coffee and to stretch our legs, it's quite obvious that the cafe we stopped at gets most/all it's business from passing tour buses but the staff getting in their 'battle stations' as soon as our bus came in to sight. 

So after a quick "wrong brack" and a protein drink we jumped back on and contined the journey.being a good tour guide the bus driver whacked on a great NZ movie " The Fastest Indian" to help pass some time.

After disembarking from the coach and slowly managing to gain blood flow back to our legs we made a quick pit stop at the campsite to shower and grabbed the passports. We once again indulged in FergBurger, this time we had one each and decided not to "overdo" the sides and only got one serving of onion rings. With the night still young we decided to venture out and take part in some of the night activities- going to the casino and having a slap! Somehow we managed to blow $45 in a 10 minute period and Ed decided to tighten the purse strings and refuse to spend any more money. Even though Andrew was jumping up and down demanding his pocket money to blow on the blackjack tables- not happening! 

Somewhat pucturesque, right?

We then visited the Tardis bar to take part in their advertised lucky raffle they were having for $23,000 worth of prizes, after locating this stylish dump and having a shot each whilst having a chat to the bar tender ( the only other person in the whole place except from us) we discovered you actually had to be at the bar when they called the prize at some hideous time of 4am. Which apparently is when the bar became somewhat busy. Admitting that this was well past our bed time we headed to the "pig & whistle " and had a $6 English Pint each served to us by a less than friendly barman. We took them outside to drink them by the outdoor gas fire place to avoid any un wanted attention from any of the rough backpackers inside.

Pints by the fireplace ... outside!

The (street) sign says it all again...