Another early start today! We had to be on the road to Milford Sound by 7.30. The journey was 2 hours each way but the scenary was really pretty so it passed pretty quickly.

Milford Sound is one of the fiords in New Zealand. It also has the highest rainfall in the world! It can only be accessed from the sea, via one road or a challenging 3/4 day walk on the Hollyford track. We opted for the road! The road twists around the mountains before tunnelling under one of them!! Eek! The tunnel is over 1km long, very shallow and narrow and goes quite steeply downhill. There are no lights, no reinforcements and it literally looks like the hole was chipped out of the rock with a pick axe (we think it probably was, it took 19 years to complete!). However, the alternative was a 4 day hike over the mountain so we drove through anyway! It was a little scary! Claire really hated it and would have closed her eyes had she not been driving but I actually preferred it to some of the drives over the mountains!

Once we arrived at Milford Sound we checked in for our boat and sprayed ourselves with Deet. There was no way the sandflies were getting near us again!! The smell was so bad, people actually moved away in disgust.

We opted for the nature cruise, which basically meant our boat went slowly and stopped more than some of the other trips where they did a quick circuit and headed back. And we had a brief commentry on board, although the captain compared most of the trip, we think the nature guy was a bit sea-sick?

It was a really beautiful trip. The mountains rise straight out of the water with rainforest growing all the way up. It's amazing that the plants and trees can grow on sheer cliffs and we saw one example of a recent tree avalanche where a couple of trees near the top had fallen and brought the whole lot down with them. It will take over 100 years but them all to grow back! But instead of germinating in soil, they grow in moss, amazing!

It is really hard to get perspective in the sound as everything is so immense. The cliffs were over 2,000 feet high and the water was over 1,000 feet deep as the cliff continues steep under the water. The waterfall in the picture is over 150m tall, or the same height as Niagra falls, but it looked really small in comparison with the mountains.

We saw seals but no dolphins or penguins :-( Never mind! The trip was beautiful and totally worth the 4 hour drive (and 2 trips through the tunnel!). The weather was also pretty good. It was cloudier the further we went and drizzled a little but usually it rains 5 days a week there so we picked a good day!

On the way back we made a couple of stops, firstly at the Chasm, a waterfall that has cut amazing shapes into the rocks, and next at the Mirror Lake where you can see a perfect mirror image of the mountains in the lake.

Back in Te Anau we stopped for petrol and lunch (Subway again as it was 4pm by the time we got there!) and set off back to Queenstown.

2 hours later we checked into our hostel. Our room is tiny but nice. We'll have to be tidy and organised! We walked to the town and couldn't resist the shops! It's so nice here!! One of our favourite towns I think! We grabbed some soup for dinner and walked slowly back around the lake to our hostel.

It was past 9 when we got back so we had to get ready for our rafting trip tomorrow. Another early start as we have to leave by 7. Boo!