March 28

Awoke to darkness, cool, no rain.  Breakfast at the hotel and onto the bus for an early start, crossing the southern end of the south island to Milford Sound.  We are out as the sun rises there is a lot of mist/fog but we can see pretty well.  We follow a semi circular route as there are no highways cutting across the mountains, passing through the small town of Te Anou.  There are mile after mile of sheep, deer and cattle and some edible crops.  The driver is from Christchurch and he is an experienced hiker in the area. He has had to take jobs out of NZ because gainful employment is difficult here.  He tells us the Maori people did not settle the South Island very much, mostly on the north with milder temps and easier living.   This side of the divide is dryer, we enter Fiordland National Park. There are great hiking trails and ‘experiences’ in the Park.  There are no beasties here, physical stamina and weather are the dangers.  We start to see higher mountains with wide glacier valleys.  The rivers are braided.  The mountains are jagged and over 11,000 feet in places.  They are measured as they lift from sea level, not plateau.  The highest mountain on in the world designated as sheer cliff sided, is located here. We enter a rainforest of mosses, lichens and palm like plants.  The Park area gets more rain than the Amazon.  They get snow and some glaciers still exist but they anticipate they will be gone in the next 10 years or so.  They have to deal with avalanches.  There are no super highways here and the roads (good quality) must follow the contour of the land.  The trees are tall and profuse, various species.  We climb to the continental divide and we must take a tunnel that is no more than rough dug rock with a single lane.  As we emerge the deep valley of high mountains faces us.  Most are in cloud and it is raining.  We have passed multiple waterfalls of all heights and volume.  The water rolls off the sheer granite drops of the mountains.  We come into Milford Sound that joins the Tasman Sea.  It’s misnamed by early settlers as a sound, it is actually a fjord. We board a boat that takes us into a narrow channel of incredibly high mountains with hundreds of waterfalls. The mountains rise directly from the water, there is still a lot of their depth underwater.  The clouds are lifting and we see more detail.  The water is so deep the captain follows the sides of the mountains just a few feet away.  He also takes us head on into big waterfalls.  The sides are covered with lush vegetation that can only be there by intertwining of root systems.  We sail to the end of the fjord to where it meets the open Tasman Sea.  We are as far south as we can be on this trip from Antarctica.  We float by a rock full of young male seals. They pose for the cameras.  The scenery is so striking and so different from other places we have been we can’t stop taking pictures.  We drive back the 4 hours to Queenstown in mostly sun, seeing mountains in open sun.  We watch the movie The Fastest Indian with Anthony Hopkins on the way back. The movie was about the New Zealander who set records at Bonneville race track.  He is from a town just a few miles from our location and partly filmed here.   We take advantage of the mild evening and walk around the tourist town.  Open air restaurants and little shops.  It’s Easter break week and very busy.  Back to the hotel, we have another early morning with a tour that takes us off road and shows us remote areas and places where Lord of the Ring was filmed.  Another day of adventure and seeing amazing things.   One of the travelers has developed motion sickness and having a hard time in the bus and on the boat.  Hope she feels better.  PS Got email from Seth, he stopped down to check on the house and a Hudson policeman stopped him and asked for his ID.  Glad to know they are on the job, we registered for them to drive by and they’re actually doing it!