We picked up our car, a Toyota Corolla hatchback, from Dunedin Car Hire in the morning on Friday the 18th. While the car cost quite a bit more than the rental prices Kiara was used to seeing in Mexico, we felt fortunate to have found one of the few places in New Zealand who would rent to people under 21!
After packing all of our stuff in the car (It was quite full...) we headed out of Dunedin on Highway 1 towards Invercargil, and eventually Te Anau. Surprisingly, it wasn't difficult to drive on the wrong side of the road...after walking everywhere for the last 2 months, the greatest difficulty was trying to remember which roads leading out of Dunedin were one way!
The drive to Te Anau was quite pleasant. We had heard several horror stories concerning the condition of the roads in New Zealand...it is likely that those stories came from people who had never been to northern Minnesota. If they had ever driven the Echo Trail, we would have only heard praise of the roads in New Zealand!
Te Anau, located on Lake Te Anau, (They are quite creative with town names here) was a tourist town through and through. It was fun to look through some of the stores, but you would have to be a rich tourist, not a poor college student to afford anything. We did, however, book a 8:55 cruise on Milford for the next morning while we were at the I-Site located on the lake's edge.
That night, we drove to the DOC campsite on Lake Gun, and by the time we got there it was dark and all of the tent sites (very rocky and unappealing) were taken, so we slept in the car. This isn't as bad as it sounds. We moved all of our stuff to the front seats and flipped the back seats down so that we slept with our feet in the trunk. When we woke up on the 19th (at 5:00 am as we still had a ways to go to get to Milford Sound) it was SNOWING! It was warm enough that the roads were not icy, but the snow was sticking on the mountain peaks, making for a beautiful early morning drive.
When we got to Milford Sound, we were treated to a great view of the fjord at first light. It was quite impressive, though the light contrast resulted in either washed out or shadowed pictures...
As we had booked the earliest cruise possible, we had our boat, and the fjord, nearly to ourselves. The boat was rated to hold 75...there were about 10 other people on it, leaving lots of elbow room and freedom to wander around for the best view. The cruise lasted about two hours, and took us out of the fiord (misnamed a sound) into the Tasman Sea. The highlight of the cruise was getting to see a pod of bottle nosed dolphins that came right up to the boat so that we from where we were standing on the front deck we were only a couple of meters away!
After the cruise, we drove back to Te Anau. The drive was even prettier in the full sun, especially when we exited the Homer Tunnel above the snow line and found ourselves surrounded by several inches of snow, only to drive back down into a green valley. We stopped for a picnic lunch at Lake Gunn. Although it was our campsite from the night before this was the first time that we had seen it in the light. The lake was a beautiful green color due to the greenish-grey rocks/gravel that made up the surrounding area. We also stopped at The Chasm, a deep cleft or chasm in the ground that a river dropped down into, and the Mirror Lakes that reflected one of the numerous mountain ranges along the side of the valley road. Unfortunately the day was a wee bit too windy to get good reflections of the mountains, but we still got some nice pictures. Both The Chasm and Mirror Lakes were only short 15-20 minute walks, but mountains and countryside was very enjoyable and it was nice to get out of the car and stretch our legs.
We made one final stop in Te Anau for petrol before driving all the way up to Queenstown, where arrived just as it was getting dark and spent the night at the Twelve Mile River Delta DOC campsite.
Caleb and Kiara
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