Day 27 - Milford Sound

We'd booked up late last night to go on a day trip to Milford Sound rather then wait for another let down on the sky diving. We had been told that Milford Sound was a must visit as this fjord (For Jo: Lake supplied by the sea! Help from Bev after explanation to her!) was set in some great scenery.

The coach picked us up early and wet set of on the 4 hour journey to get to Milford where the boat was waiting for us. The weather stayed good for the journey round to the first set of mountains that needed to be crossed. We had stopped off at a few photo points on the way there so that we could stretch our legs.

One of the stops that we where let off the coach for was for a 15 minute walk though the woods to an extremely picturesque waterfall that had carved it's way though the rock in very strange way. We where lucky that it had been raining hard the previous day as this and many other waterfalls along the way where running well as they depended on rain water for there existence. As you can see from the pictures the forest in this area was made up mainly from beech trees and ferns all covered by moss. Some of the trees here where as old as 600 years.

We also encountered the Kea parrot which is a very friendly and funny bird that seemed to inhabit all the tourist stop off points. These birds are very inquisitive to the point of coming right up to you and nibbling your camera (Good job mine is parrot proof!) Bev found it very amusing that they have a knack of side stepping with a hop like a cross between a penguin and a crab!

Once we had crossed through Homer tunnel under one of the mountains for the final run into Milford the cloud descended to a low level and the rain started to drizzle. We reached the boat wharf and set off on our pleasure cruise though the sunny picturesque scenery, except the cloud was low and the rain was getting worse so we could just make out the mountains on one side!!!!

The trip was very wet but entertaining as we got to try out our special Peruvian hats. We did see lots of waterfalls although to be honest we'd seen a lot of water falls by this point!!

We did have one small treat on the return journey which was a small penguin that was spotted on the shore line. You can play spot the penguin in the picture below:

After the boat trip we all jumped back on the coach and had a long 4 hour trip back to Queenstown where the weather had been nice all day!! Once back, and as we had been driving past fields and fields of new born lambs (or new born sheep as Adrian calls them!!) we decided that tonight was the night to sample the lamb shank :) (It was very tasty)

We then fell asleep and hoped that the weather would be nice in the morning for our sky dive !! (wishful thinking)

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