[Queenstown, New Zealand] Pancakes for breakfast! Lovely. Being bitten by sandflies and having to fish them out of our tea and pancakes – not so lovely. We had to resort to strolling around the van while eating just to keep away from the nasty little buggers. It seems they are unable to keep up when you walk. It also appears they are indiscriminate blood suckers as they don’t mind munching on me even when the tastier option of Simon is right next to me. I’m also choosing to blame the loss of my flip flops on the little buggers. Found out later that I had left them behind in our hurry to escape the camp site.

Sim was correct in postponing the Milford Sound cruise till today. Today’s weather was far superior – not raining and with just a few patches of cloud in the bright blue sky.

We checked in and hung around our boat the Milford Mariner. Real Journeys has some nice rides. We cruised on out of the little cove along with 100 other passengers (they counted us).

There is a reason Milford Sound is more famous than Doubtful Sound. It is just more spectacular. It may be smaller and there may be more boats on the water, but the narrowness of Milford make the sheer cliffs on either side just more impressive. We spent the entire 2.5 hour cruise outside on the front deck of the boat just going ‘Oh wow’.

We got some good shots of Mitre Peak (it’s on every postcard and Milford brochure) and we saw the impressive Stirling Falls (150m) which was dwarfed by the 1300m high mountains on either side of it. The captain even poked the bow of the Mariner into the falls, spraying everyone on deck and joking that the falls is also known as the Milford boat wash (har har). It did illustrate very clearly how vertical the cliffs are and that they extend a good distance below the surface of the water (200m+) We got up close to the rock a couple times to check out fault lines, interesting colorations and of course some seals which were lounging around as usual. We also sailed or rather motored into the Tasman sea. It was calm today but apparently it gets pretty hectic at times with 20m+ swells.

We were thoroughly impressed with Milford Sound. Sometimes when you hear about these things it’s all just tour company hype but Milford deserves being raved about by everyone. It was stunning and well worth the drive out to get there.

On the drive out of Milford, we stopped at the other side of the Homer tunnel for a late lunch. We can’t express the absolute joy we have over a simple thing like stopping by the side of the road and being able to make ourselves a peanut butter sandwich. This is the way to travel!

After lunch we stretched our legs by hiking up to the waterfall and the patch of ice below it. We had a jol rock hopping to get there then messing around in the ice by the river. It was a fun diversion before the long drive to Queenstown.

We reached Queenstown and our most expensive campsite yet (40 dollars for an unpowered parking bay and showers are 2 dollars for 8 minutes). It does have a resident flock of ducks that waddle around though. We had a quick look around town (lots of outdoor shops and adventure activity operators) and picked up some brochures from the wall of pamphlets at the camp reception. Looks like the next 2 days are gonna be expensive but a helluva lot of fun. If it makes adrenalin then you can find it here!

[Pictures: What a view to wake up to! I thought Mitre peak was a mountain not a volcano? 150m waterfall off in the distance and Mitre Peak again. Playing on the ice near the waterfall.]

– Posted from my iPhone via Expensive 3G