A big day of driving today but absolutely beautiful countryside all the way. Rather like Scotland but with the sunshine. We are headed to Milford Sound and want to sleep there tonight so we can get on one of the cruises around the fjord early on Sunday.
We loved Wanaka and were a little sad to leave but then we had a great drive up over another mountain pass and down into Queenstown for a Starbucks coffee and a shared pastry. Like all of NZ, Queenstown offers a lot of outdoor activities including a gondola ride to the top of the nearest peak and jet boat tours of the large lake the town sits next to. This is ski country and so all of the winter activities are evident as well, x-country skiing etc. Queenstown seems a nice town but we’ll be back through in a few days and so, for now, we move on and reach Te-Anau to get more diesel and propane since there isn’t any to be had up at Milford Sound, a 240km round trip from here.
Te-Anau is stunning. It’s set on the 2nd largest lake in NZ. It’s Saturday and so all the locals are outside along with tourists, there is a sailboat race going on and everyone is picnicking alongside the lake and so we stop for lunch from the camper and join them.
Now it’s 4.00pm or so and we have to get over the final mountain pass to the west coast and Milford Sound and so we head out and pretty soon cross the 45° latitude line and pass lots of signs asking us to stop, slow down and take fly fishing trips. I hope that we will find time to do just that on our way back north next week but, if not, that’s just the sort of thing that will bring us back for a 2 month trip to New Zealand.
We have to go through a very long one-way tunnel to get to Milford Sound (15 minutes between traffic signals) and we don’t talk a lot going through but then I ask Christine what she was thinking about during the trip inside the tunnel and she tells me that she doesn’t want to talk about it. But it’s on both our minds-what would happen if an earthquake hit now? The news from Japan has reached us.
We get to Milford Sound around 6.00pm and the one campsite is full so our only option is to share a double bunk bed dorm room with two guys from Canada, Carl and Jay. They are back-packing around NZ using buses and seem to be doing OK with the, apparently, good bus service here. Christine wants the bottom bunk but I tell her that could make it very difficult for me with my nighttime bathroom visits and so she agrees to take the top but I know she’ll spend half the night worrying about falling out. We’ll see.
1st photo is the start of the climb over the Southern Alps to Milford Sound and the next is Te-Anau lake. Next 2 are of Queenstown.
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