Milford Sound

Wednesday, 19 November

Had a nice breakfast in the morning, then walked in the rain to the bus, which we boarded again to go to Milford Sound. Milford isn't as remote as Doubtful Sound, but only because there is a road that goes directly there. The road is closed after 5pm every night due to safety regulations. Avalanches happen often and can be extremely disastrous - destroying the road and killing people. This morning, the road stayed closed until 11am because the night before brought a good amount of snow to the pass between Te Anau and Milford.

Here are pics from a few stops along the way to Milford Sound:

This is a Kea bird - the world's (only?) Alpine parrot found only in the South Island of NZ. They can be pesky little buggers... this particular one ended up on the top of our bus and walked from the front all the way to the back as we started moving forward, finally diving for it when he reached the end. They are also known to attack and destroy the rubber from windshield wipers and windows on vehicles...!

And it snowed on our way to Milford! At one point the driver let a few people out to have a snow fight.

When we got to Milford Sound itself, it was quite gray and cloudy. As we started on the 90 minute cruise, I wasn't expecting to see much (it was also so blustery and rainy!).

However, in true New Zealand fashion, within 15 minutes the weather started to clear up and the clouds parted so we had some blue skies.

Dad hiding from the wind and sun to see his pics...

You can see how massive that waterfall is if you look to the boat on the right above.

The boat pulled in close to this waterfall - all the Asian ladies started screaming as their coats and hats flew all over the place and they felt the spray. I ducked for cover at the front of the boat!

Heading back in the clouds surrounded us once again. Considering so many people come on days where you can't see anything at all, we had yet another day of nearly perfect weather.

Took the bus all the way back to Queenstown and met... Ewoud!

My Dutch cycle buddy from weeks 1 and 2 cycled like mad the last several days (133km one day through Haast pass to Wanaka...) and made it all the way to Q-town to meet us there our last night. It was so good to see him again - can't believe it's been more than 4 weeks since we said good-bye in Auckland. The three of us had a nice dinner and some drinks later and caught up on stories from the road. So glad we got to hang out once more Ewoud! :)