Wednesday dawned as wet and windy as forecast, and having run around and cancelled all my early morning coach rides to the start of the Routeburn Track (very good decision!), the lovely people at Real Journeys moved my Milford Sound cruise forward a few days. So midday saw me getting on a coach with my bags packed, ready to spend my first night away from my little spaceship.
The journey down the Milford Road is considered to be part and parcel of your Milford Sound experience. The entire length of the track is dotted with viewpoints, small offshoots of track, and the occasional service area with toilets and an information board or two. Our coach driver kept us entertained with stories - well, I say kept us entertained. Most people on the bus (our party had a whole 11 people in it) were asleep by the time we were 30 minutes out of Te Anau. He decided to fix that by making us all get out and spend 15 minutes walking a track through the rainforest to see a particularly spectacular waterfall called "The Chasm". I couldn't get any decent photos of the waterfall itself, but I did get a nice one of the rain forest walk.For some reason, I had always believed that rain forests were warm places. I was roundly disabused of that notion on this walk as it was anything but hot & humid. Apparently, this is what's called a temperate rain forest. You get all the moss & plants and moisture, but not the temperature to go with it.
Having made it to Milford we had a short wait before boarding our boat - the Milford Wanderer. By this time several other self drive groups had joined us so there were about 40 people on the cruise in total. I was suddenly very nervous when I saw the boat had masts and sails as no-one had said anything about sailing.....but I was later told the sails are purely ornamental and that whilst they could be raised, you couldn't actually sail the boat with them!
We set off in the middle of thunder, lightening and torrential rain, verging on hailstones. Forget calm water & mirrored reflections of Mitre Peak. This was choppy, foggy Milford Sound in what we could politely term its' "atmospheric best". The crew were certainly at pains to point out that the waterfalls were most spectacular in these weather conditions. Besides which, it's only water, it won't hurt you! Just occasionally, the cloud would clear and you would glimpse a view, then a few minutes later it would all close back in again.
One of the activities advertised on this particular trip was kayaking. Suggested alternatives were a trip in the speedboat, or a swim in the Sound itself. There was a certain amount of "you must be joking" from the group when they said it was time to go, but one hardy aussie did dive in to the water for all of 3 minutes before getting out and shivering. I decided that since this was my only opportunity to kayak then I would just get in and get wet. I am so glad I did as despite the rain and the cold it was fantastic.
I didn't get to take any photos as we were advised to leave cameras behind in the dry. And admittedly we didn't get to see any wildlife as they were also presumably sheltering from the weather. But after a 10 minute trip with a guide to make sure we could all just about handle our kayaks, we were allowed to stray within the confines of the large bay where the boat was moored. And it's a completely different Sound once you're on your own with no engine running.After dinner we had a rather unexpected activity - a trip right out into the Tasman Sea. Ordinarily, we would have stayed within the relatively calm and sheltered confines of the Sound. However, a mayday call being received from a small fishing vessel with engine troubles, reportedly close to the entrance to Milford Sound, all nearby vessels (i.e. us) were scrambled to the rescue. Just as we reached the sea, a helicopter also arrived to help search for the vessel, and we spent a very tense 30 minutes scanning the horizon, trying to tell the difference between a boat in trouble and one that was similarly part of the rescue effort. The huge swell on the ocean made scanning the horizon somewhat challenging but the experience of crashing through the waves certainly got the adrenalin racing. Eventually, our search was called off as the boat was located some 200km further up the coast. From reading the news reports, the crew were rescued in the early hours of this morning but spent the night stranded on rocks near the coast having had to abandon ship and had sleeping bags dropped to them from the chopper.
I'm sure I read somewhere that sunrise was the absolute best time to experience Milford Sound, so for some insane reason I got up at 5:30am to check for myself. If you ever go out on this cruise......stay in bed!! Admittedly there was so much cloud cover that you really didn't see sunrise. But even so, the Sound in the early morning light is really no different to the Sound in the evening. Except possibly colder.Our boat took another turn around the Sound in the morning and we did see more wildlife this time - mainly fur seals and some sea birds. Then, wet through and thoroughly cold and tired, we piled back on the coach to Te Anau. My stated goal at that point was to get in my car and drive north until I found the sun!
Well, the sun came out around Queenstown. I kept going until I reached Wanaka and have stopped here for the evening. The combination of Christmas approaching and the usual "no trips for 1 person" mean that I won't be here for long - I think I will get an early night tonight, and tomorrow I will keep going up the west coast and do my best to reach the Abel Tasman National Park by Christmas Day. Fingers crossed that by then, not only will the sun still be out, but the very strong, very cold winds will also have dropped.
Yikes - long blog! Congratulations on reading right to the end :-)
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