We spent the last day in Queenstown walking around and enjoying the day. We grabbed lunch at a little sushi place on the pedestrian mall with great lunch deals. We took off pretty late for Milford Sound, which was about a four-hour drive from Queenstown.

Halfway through the drive, we stopped off briefly in the town of Te Anau for dinner, but every place we went to for dinner was closing or closed. After all, it was 9PM. :) Things close down really early here. We are heading into winter, and a lot of these towns are rapidly slowing down as the number of tourists drop.

It started pouring during our search for food, which included one of the restaurant managers offering to make a steak and salad for $40 each since his cook left and it is the only thing he knew how to make. He was nice, but that's crazy. We just decided to cook for ourselves in the parking lot of the local supermarket. Have camper van, will travel. We made a quick instant soup dinner and hit the road, landing in Milford Sound at right around midnight. We pretty much immediately went to bed, since we had to be ready to go at 8:15 the next morning for the kayak trip.

We woke up tired but excited. Milford Sound was high on our list of places to get to, and after our experiences in Vietnam on Halong Bay, we were looking forward to getting back into a kayak. Our guide met us on the dot at 8:15AM, and we filled out some paperwork, loaded up into a van, and headed down to the water. We got kitted up with vests, oars, wet bags, a waterproof shell, hats, polypro's, etc., and then after some brief instruction, we got into our kayak.

Right out of the gate, we spotted two dolphins, one of which breached just to our left and then swam directly under our kayak. It was fantastic.

Milford Sound is really a fjord with some really unique aspects. Because of the vegetation on the enormous peaks surrounding the water, the glacial melt and rain water are loaded with tannins that color the fresh water a murky brown. Underneath about three meters of that murky brown freshwater is clear salt water from the ocean. As a result, underwater life that normally lives at depths of 200m in the ocean lives a mere ten meters below the water in Milford Sound, since the dark freshwater layer blocks out a significant amount of light.

Periodically during the trip, our guide, Rosey, stopped us and the two other kayaks in our group, asked us to "raft up", where we got side by side and held on to each other, and explained some of the history or geology of the area. We saw buoys which mark the pens that hold Fiordland crayfish, a New Zealand specialty and lucrative export. We learned how some of the surrounding Falls were named, and we learned about the flora and fauna in the Sound, including a stop to view some Milford Sound sea lions. Another interesting fact about the fjords is that the ferns, brush, and trees grow right out of the rock on the sheer mountain faces. Moss grows on the steep vertical mountain faces, brush clings to the moss, and the trees cling to the brush, all locked in a precarious grip. Every once in a while, during heavy rains or extreme events, the weight of the whole system becomes too great, and when one tree topples over, it takes everything with it in what is called a "tree avalanche," leaving a gaping hole on the side of the mountain.

We did a good bit of kayaking, moving from one end of the Sound to the other, and we pretty much kayaked the better part of four hours. It began raining on us around half way through, but we had the perfect amount of gear to keep us dry and warm. We were able to glide through the water, feel the rain on our faces, and enjoy the ripples on the water's surface.

Rosey was so hard core that she never stopped for lunch, although we were supposed to. In fact, at one point while we were rafted up, we drifted so far due to the large currents in the Sound that Rosey ended up making us kayak an extra mile to get back to where we needed to go, and still she never fed us (although she did stop once to give us some hot liquid refreshment). We actually brought lunch with us on the kayak and kept it in a dry bag, but we never got to eat it out on the water. We did end up getting to do more kayaking than we would have, so it was all worth it. At the end of the day, we were absolutely ravenous. It was good to get a hard workout, and we devoured our lunch in the heat of the Milford Lodge common room, in front of which our van was parked.

We still managed to get a little wet despite all the gear, so we got changed in the van and cranked up the heater. It felt soooo good. We would have liked to stick around and do a hike the next day, but we heard the drive on the road to the Sound was amazing (we did it at night on the way out), so we wanted to experience it during the day on the way back. It really was incredible. Enormous mountains loomed with steep vertical faces covered with cascading waterfalls, present only due to the excessive rains that the fjords get each year, over 6 meters. We stopped in front of a massive stone tunnel excavated in the 1950's, with native New Zealand birds called Kea's present to keep us company. We drove through lush rainforests and beautiful undulating land with sea fog hanging just above us most of the way. The scenery here is epic.

We got to the midway point, Te Anau, and decided to stay there for the night.