Day 5, Milford Sound January 14th 2013

WOW........seriously, wow !!! We jumped on the bus to Milford Sound about 7.30am this morning. Mother nature had been kind to us and not only dusted the mountains with a fresh coat of snow above the tree line but also began to blow the clouds away by late morning.

The drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound is worth the trip, the boat trip is just something to do while you stand around with your mouth open in amazement.

About 50ks or so into the trip we pulled up at Mirror Lake for some picture practice.

And then the real mountains came into view.

We waited about 30 seconds before the green light for the tunnel put us on the west side of the ranges and the serious wow's started to come into view.

Further down into the valley towards Milford Sound we dropped about 1000 metres over the course of a couple of kilometres.

We pulled up half way down and watch this Kea trying to eat a mini bus before heading down to the docks.

We were quickly herded on board with the rest of the sheeple and headed out into the Sound.

I'll let the pics say the words from here, but to put it into perspective these mountains are 1000 - 1500 metres high, that's about as high as Kaputar straight up off the water.

We spend around 2.5hrs on the boat and then jumped back on the bus and a few more photo stops as we headed back to Te Anau.

You know you are parked next to some seriously steep mountains when you have to look through the roof to see the top of them.

Huge day today. These’s were a couple of 438 pictures we took. Tomorrow we head to Wanaka via the Highlands Motorsport Complex, go carts, fast laps or a few hot laps in a Suzuki Swift ??? we'll see when we get there. Stu

Day 4, Queenstown > Te Anau, January 13th 2014

Well it was time to leave Queenstown. The cold, wintery, wet conditions made the desire to leave stronger but it's still hard to leave a place like this even in the worst of weather.

The drive from Queenstown to Te Anau is remarkable to say the least. Initially you follow the southern arm of Lake Wakatipu around for 20 - 30ks.

As you get away from the lake you come into prime grazing country.

Last year when we were here we hardly saw any sheep but this year there were thousands of them everywhere.

We decided to go down to Manapori on our way the Te Anau just for a look. The town itself didn't have a lot to offer but it's the gate way to the Doubtful Sound so it sees a lot of tourist traffic. Easy to see why.

We got into Te Anau for lunch so we grabbed a seat at the local steak house. Here's the magnificent 8, oh well, the Magnificent and Jodi.

I'm not big on "look what I'm eating pics" but, get a look at these BBQ pork ribs, I ate them about 1pm and it's now 8.45pm and I'm still not hungry.

We bummed around town looking at all the local tourist trap shops for an hour or so. Last year we found Te Anau reasonably priced but things have changed a little since 2013, I think they may have employed a few marketing managers from Queenstown, as there are not too many bargains to be had here now. We found a brochure on the Glow Worm cave, or as we later found out the Glow Maggots is more precise, so we decided to fill in the rest of the day with a run across the lake and little cave walk. You can't take pics inside the caves so sorry not much to show you guys on that. The scenery on the way there was spectacular as usual, I'll let the pics do the talking but just keep in mind it's 7C.

Well we are going "full tourist" tomorrow and doing the Milford Sound by coach > boat > coach. So get ready for a pic heavy post in 24 hours. I'm just going to slip into a spa and wash off a bit of glow maggot poo, hooroo. Stu

Day 3, Queenstown 12th January 2014

Well we woke up this morning after listening to the wind and rain rattle the windows all night and it looked pretty average outside.

All the little creeks and rivulets were running down the mountain sides and the clouds were low and heavy. We dug out the wet weather gear and headed into town to have a look around at what we could do on such a day.

The TSS Earnslaw, an old steam powered boat makes trips across the lake every 90 minutes, you can take the poverty pack and just grab a seat and do the trip there and back or you can cough up a few more bucks and have a look around a "real" farm and watch some guy play with sheep.

As the other passengers disembarked to watch a kiwi get up close and personal with his woolly friend we had a look around the boat and took a few pics.

The trip there and back was uneventful and kept us out of the rain until the clouds began to break, probably because the wind was tearing them apart.

Back in town we jumped in the car and headed out to the little AJ Hacket bungy jump, Jodi wanted to bungy but at the Nevis, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, there was a chance she may have aggravated a knee injury she's been trying to get on top of so she decided against it.....this year....anyway the Kawarua Bridge jump it 40 odd meters, about as high as the old flour mill at Moree, so shouldn't be a problem and away she went.

Once again photo's say it better than words can.

It's was a pretty sedate day for Queenstown standards, the DRZ was in stock today but it was pouring the whole time I had the opportunity to take it out so, maybe next time. Jodi and I are committed to coming back, she wants to do the Nevis bungy and we will both jump out of a perfectly good plane adjacent to the Remarkables, it'll be awesome but I also have a whole year to think of a way to back out. Tomorrow we are off the Te Anau, so not much happening on a travel day but we'll keep an eye out. Some talk of snow on the peaks tonight.