Tuesday, Oct 19th: With a slight change to our plans – we ended up having our flight back to Sydney moved a day earlier – we decided to try and get to Milford Sound. We woke up pretty early and caught about 10 minutes of sunshine before the clouds rolled in. Pretty rainy and overcast for the rest of the day, but we made the most out of it anyway. The plan was to drive up to Te Anau (this little town on the lake) and catch a bus to Milford Sound in order to split up the long drive. We left at around 8:25 to try and catch a 10:30 bus. The drive is supposed to take 2 hours so we were cutting it pretty close.
We managed to get to Te Anau at around 10:15 only to find out that the road to Milford Sound was closed since it had snowed and there was 50cm (over 1.5 feet!) of snow on the road. You know, typical spring snow storm. We ended up just driving a bit more south and taking in the winding roads and all the adorable little sheep along the road.
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The little baby sheep seem like a cross between puppies and bunnies and are just out of this world cute.
According to one statistic I found online there are 47.2 million sheep in New Zealand. That means there are more than 13 times as many sheep as there are people here. Thought that was a pretty outrageous figure. Along with the sheep along the road we saw deer farms and lots of cattle.
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The cows seemed to want to be photographed as they gathered by the side and kept coming closer to where I was standing.
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They actually seemed a little sad when we pulled away. All in all it was a really fun day of just driving around and getting to see New Zealand.
The next morning I woke up at 5 A.M to watch … the Patriots Game!!! Pretty funny watching the game in New Zealand and seeing the sunrise over the mountains here. After a nerve wracking but very successful game we started our day! The first activity was jet boating on the Shotover River. Going anywhere in New Zealand is such a pleasure because the drives are beautiful.
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But back to Jet boating. Basically you get in this boat that is powered through jet propulsion (takes in water and blasts it out the back) and shoot down the river. The Shotover River jet boat is especially fun because you wind through this canyon. Throughout the ride we would do full 360’s where the driver would start going one direction and then cut it back sharply causing the boat to spin all the way around. Quite the adrenilne rush. At times it got a bittttt cold as the water was a chilly 6 degrees Celsius (around 43 degrees?) and the wind didn’t help. Actually got a legitimate brain freeze at one point, but it was all part of the fun. It’s pretty amazing because the boat is able to go over really shallow parts, as shallow as 4 inches! All in all, a great way to start the day.
The air in New Zealand just feels so clean, so we felt really refreshed and clean when we got off the boat. After a delicious meal of meat pies to warm us up we headed down to Glenorchy for a more scenic jet boat and a walk through a forest. Glenorchy is one of the main places they used to film The Lord of the Rings and it’s pretty easy to understand why. Just breathtaking.
Pretty epic waterfall.
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Once again the sun started fading in and out so this ride was especially cold. After about an hour of jetting along the river we were pretty relieved to hop out.
To warm up we went on a quick walk around this forest.
My mom kept trying to do a New Zealand accent, but it kept coming out Scottish so we had a good laugh over that. (For the record, other than the New Zealand accent, she is quite good at doing imitations.) After a full day we began the drive back to Queesntown. On the ride back the sun popped out and the sky became this beautiful blue.
Not to be a broken record here, but the driving in New Zealand has to be the prettiest I have ever seen.
With views like this on the right, you can understand why.
Upon returning to the hotel after a delicious Italian meal (pizza with prawn and buffalo mozzarella and spaghetti with sausage in an eggy cream sauce) we found out that Qantas had found and delivered my mom’s bag! Hooray!!!
