Beautiful Milford

Trip Start Aug 21, 2006
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Trip End Nov 24, 2006


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Where I stayed
Lake Tenau YHA
(Milford Sound hotels)

Flag of New Zealand  ,
Wednesday, October 25, 2006

So New Zealand has gotten off to a quiet start - oh well, we needed a break anyway! We hopped into our mean machine and headed off to Lake Tenau, the base for Milford Sound. On the way, we stopped a number of times to take some pics of the mountains and generally beautiful scenery, little did we know that what we were seeing would be blown away by Milford Sound and the surrounding area!

The Lake Tenau YHA hostel was really quiet and both Pipe and I got extremely annoyed with the sad sacks watching Corrie and Bad Girls in the TV room, when we wanted to watch a film - many of you probably know we're not very good when we don't get our own way!...I thought Pipe was going to get physical with a couple of the whinging Corrie watchers! Then, when he couldn't get on the internet, I thought he was going to explode! Haha.

Anyway, that was all forgotten as we drove the hour and a half to Milford Sound, stopping off at Mirror lakes and some other unbelievably beautiful places Do you like penguins? Yellow Crested - v. rare!
Do you like penguins? Yellow Crested - v. rare!
 . The pics just don't really do it justice. A quick note to my parents: you have to come here and get a camper van - you will adore it! The driving is some of the best you will ever do - unless you get stuck behind a bus of Japanese tourists!

We did a three hour walk to Key Summit, and ate lunch by a whitewater river, with the mountains and forest around us - best ham, cheese and tomato sandwhich I ever had! We also had a funny encounter with a snap happy Japanese man, who said he was taking photos for Air New Zealand based in Japan, and wanted some handsome caucasion faces for his pics - we were happy to oblige, so maybe we'll be in a brochure or something in Japan....better get our lawyers working on those image rights!

That night the TV room was free - phew! I didn't really fancy bailing Pipe out of a Kiwi jail. We got up early and drove to Milford Sound again - it was nicer the day before because we had lovely blue sky - today it was cold and grey. We took a very windy and very cold boat trip out through the sound (which is actually a fjord) and into the Tasman Sea. Once again, very beautiful. I hope I don't get bored of all this wonderful scenery!

Then it was another long drive in the Mazda machine to the adrenaline fuelled town of Queenstown....bring it on!
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