Monday 21st February

We had a slightly disturbed night, blaming noisy air conditioning.  When we opened the curtains, we realised the window was slightly open, it was pouring with rain and the wind was moving the trees around.  Thanks to Mervyn and Jeanne for wishing us rain at Milford Sound!!!!

It was the Olive Tree for breakfast then back to the hotel ready for pick up by coach at 10.00am.  The coach was somewhat late but we found out this was a shuttle doing the round of the local hotels and we were last on the round.  We were dropped at the tour base where we joined a larger coach which had come from Queenstown.

The coach was a special panoramic coach with a glass roof, huge windows, the inside seats set slightly forward of the window seats and the back of the coach higher than the front.  This would have been fantastic on a bright sunny day but as the cloud base was extremely low and the rain was pouring down it seemed a waste.

We made a few stops on the way to Milford Sound but the weather was against any special photos.

The driver had timed her arrival at Homer Tunnel perfectly as we drove straight in; it is possible to have to wait half and hour to pass through.  Linda didn’t like the tunnel as it was pitch black and only one lane.  The road surface was extremely rough and noisy.

On leaving the tunnel the landscape opened out into a huge amphitheatre where the road zigzagged down the valley.  Water was cascading from all of the cliffs and it was phenomenal to see.  We stopped just after getting out of the tunnel for a photo stop and it was an amazing sight in every direction.  Ten minutes further down the valley the coach stopped at an area called The Chasm.  The driver said that the falls should be awesome due to the rain but it was a 15 minute trail to the falls and back.  The majority of the people on the coach decided to go and although we came back looking like drowned rats it was worth it.  (It brought to mind our visit to Skara Brae with Mark and Janet.  The heavens opened on our way back to the car and so when we arrived back, absolutely soaked, Mark insisted that we took our trousers off before sitting in his car!) 

Ten minutes further down the valley we were at the landing stage for the boats and the sun made a brief appearance.

The voyage on the boat down the fiord is impossible to describe so we have just put in a few photos.

The weather changed many times as we progressed along the fiord so our photos are of variable quality.  We were very lucky to see the waterfalls in full flow and although it would have been good to do the journey with a blue sky and the sun shining we would not have had such impressive scenery.

 Heare is a picture of a large boat in the above waterfall, giving the idea of scale!

And here are the photos of us after our boat went near to the waterfall.

And here is our boat near to a smaller waterfall.

As the guide said we can always buy photographs with blue skies!  (Linda has decided to stop talking about one waterfall too many in Canada!). 

The journey back in the coach was a lot drier and we even saw some blue sky. We were able to see the mountains and lakes that the driver had referred to on our outbound journey.   

The weather was a blessing in some ways as we had no encounters with the dreaded sand fly, although we didn’t get to see the birds that we had hoped for.  We have still not had a sighting of a Kea in the wild!

We arrived back in Te Anau and the sun was definitely shining and the lake looked totally different from how we had left it at ten o’clock.

However Linda’s trousers were STILL not dry from the visit to the chasm 5 hours previously.

We visited The Olive Tree for dinner again as their menu was so varied and we knew that the quality was very good.