Milford Sound = Beautiful!

After coming down from the hill side and the fabulous view of Queenstown it was only a few minutes before I got a call from CB to say that they had arrived and trying to figure out where we were going to meet each other. A little confusion was had since the instructions of “Meet me by the guitar playing guy at the beach” seems really simple when the beach is only 200m long, however becomes much more complicated when you realise that there are about 4 people playing guitar along the beach front, some busking some practising but all confusing us!

It was really great to see CB again and it weirdly feels as if no time has passed at all. I think that is how you can know that you have a true friendship with someone. If you can meet up with them on the other side of the world, trusting all your plans to a few random messages on Facebook and then meet up after a few years of barely talking yet feel completely comfortable then you know you are onto a good thing.

That night we headed to a town called Te Anau that was on the way to Milford sound to try and break the drive up a bit. CB and Audrey had both been working all day and it was already 4pm by the time we had met up so didn’t seem wise to start driving down all the winding quiet roads in the dead of night. We stayed in a nice little motel and wandered into town for some food. Te Anau is only a small town on the shore of a beautiful lake (seems to be the standard practice for New Zealand!) and although it was a bit cloudy it was still a beautiful site. The one thing that I really cant get over here isn’t the views of the lakes or mountains or epic landscapes, it is the sky at night. The landscape was something that I knew was going to be amazing. It has features that we don’t have at home and there are pictures of it all the time that you can take a look at so that you can know what to expect when you get here. The sky and the stars though are a completely different ballgame. There are not many photos going about of the sky and stars since they are a bit trickier to get right but I really do wish that I could get a picture to show you all what an amazing site I am seeing every night. When the sun has set and the night falls the stars truly come out to play and almost instantly the sky is alive with the brightest stars I have ever seen. There is so little light pollution here that I can even start to make out the clouds of different galaxies far off into the distance of space. The nights sky also silhouettes the mountains to make it all the more impressive. I may have to get some warm clothes (since I am a little lacking in them at the moment) and go and sit out one night under the stars for a few hours taking it all in. Astronomy in the UK is useless as even if the night is clear it is so hard to see anything with all the light from nearby towns and cities. Here there is none of that and even in the centre of town you can still get an amazing view of the heavens above. Seriously impressive!

The next morning we had a super early start in order to drive the 2 hours to get to Milford Sound in time for our ferry trip. Audrey had arranged everything for us so I am so grateful for that as all I have had to do is turn up and pay my share and all of the transport and activities were planned and sorted beforehand. As we set off the weather wasn’t to great and it looked like we may have had a miserable day ahead of us. Taking a leaf out of the Scott Rollins playbook we put on shorts anyway because as everyone knows, if you wear shorts with conviction then the sun will come! The shorts totally came threw for us too. Within about an hour of driving towards Milford the clouds started to part and and the sun slowly started to get its act in order and do its job to our surprise and pleasure. It seemed like at every turn the view improved over and over again until the mountains opened up to reveal the Sound in all its glory.

The views at Milford Sound were amazing and I will not even begin to try and describe how great they were. Instead I will let all of he photos in the attached gallery speak for themselves and hopefully not make you all too jealous! The cruise that we were booked on was with one of the smaller cruise companies on a much smaller boat than some of the others that were docked in the harbour. I think was actually got a much better deal though as there were only 30 people on our cruise and meant that we were able to actually have a good chat to the 2 person crew about the area and what brought them there. Our skipper also took the boat really close to the rocks at some points to see some seals and then a waterfall, getting so close at one point that the whole front end of the boat was soaked in water from the baby waterfall hundreds of feet above. At least he did warn us before he did this to give people a little chance to run for cover before it all got a little damp!

The wind in the bay was quite intense and apparently can get really bad at certain times due to the way that the wind sweeps into the bay along the mountains. It was quite strange as a some moments the wind seemed to stop completely and be calm as we were moving along as the same speed in the same direction then it would switch and become so strong that it was hard to even stand. I was so impressed with the view and scenery of the Sound and the Sound. The little town only had 220 people in the summer living there are 70 in the winter and has to be completely self sustained as in extreme weather (that happens often in the winter) The only road in and out can often be closed, effectively trapping everyone there with only an airstrip to let them leave in case of an emergency. It seems like they have a really close community of workers there all the time as it is the sort of place where everyone needs to be there for each other as if they are not then it really wouldn’t be the type of place you would want to live. It really was a beautiful place to be and somewhere I could certainly see myself going to again.

Along with the big stuff Audrey had also planned out little things to stop and see on the way back from Milford so that we could take in as much as possible on our little trip. Another thing that amazes me about New Zealand is that it seems that around every corner there is something else to see. The type of things that in the UK we would travel for a few hours specifically to see that one feature are just scattered at the side of the road as if they are the discarded attractions that didn’t quite make the cut. We stopped at a river with a beautiful natural rock formation caused by the glacier that had some through and carved the valley and then at a beautiful waterfall in a picturesque little ravine. It seems like every moment here is a photo opportunity and other reason that people will be filled with hate online. As CB quoted though “There’s nothing wrong with Mondays, It’s your job that sucks!” which made perfect sense. It was a Monday morning and instead of being stuck in an office doing things we didn’t want to do we were out in the world having adventures and seeing amazing things. I think it was officially the best Monday ever!