After a whole day of driving, we eventually arrived at our campsite in Te Anau just as it was starting to get dark. The site was really nice and modern, and also was right on the edge of Lake Ten Anau which meant we got to see a really nice sunset over the lake when we arrived there. The lake is the second largest in the country. We settled down for the night after dinner as we had an early start the next morning. We had booked to go on a day tour to Milford Sound the following day. The road up to Milford from Te Anau, while having spectaular views, is supposed to be one of the most dangerous in New Zealand. This is one of the reasons why we thought we would book a coach tour instead, but this turned out to be a lot of hassle. We booked one online, but when we called up to confirm the pickup place we were told we weren't on the booking. It took loads of phone calls to try and sort this, but in the end we had to book another one directly over the phone. After we had been on the trip we got an email saying the money had been taken and the original booking confirmed! It was a nightmare, but I'm glad we got it all sorted because it was well worth it.

The coach picked us up outside the travel office in Te Anau at 10.15 that morning. We were the only people to get on the bus there as most people do it from Queenstown. I'm glad we didn't do that as they had already been on the coach for 3 hours, and we still had another three hours before we reached Milford. The journey there didn't seem that bad though as the coach driver was very informative and told us a lot about the area. This was another good point of getting a tour I think. The scenery everywhere was great to look at as we travelled too. We also made quite a few stops at various places along the route. We stopped at Eglinton Valley, and the Mirror Lakes which were good as they reflected the mountains. We also stoped at a place called Knob's Flat and Monkey Creek. After that we reached the place called the divide, which is where the landscape changed quite a bit and we started going up high in the mountains. From there we saw Christie Falls, and could also see some small glaciers in the mountains. We made a quick stop to take a 20 minute walk along a track to the Chasm, which is a waterfall that used to be undeground in caves but now you can see all the way down. A 10 minute drive from there and through the Homer Tunnel, which is a tunnel carved all the way through a mountain, took us into Milford itself.

We didn't really look around Milford, but the village is quite small and there isn't much to see. When we arrived we boarded the boat that was going to take us on a cruise around Milford Sound itself. Apparantly it isnt actually a sound, but a fjiord, but either way it was great to see. It's hard to describe it really, but it was very impressive. The cruise lasted for almost two hours, and we got taken all around the water and saw a few waterfalls and things. We sailed right up under one of the bigger ones which was good, and the mountains were good to look at as they rose straight up out of the water. We saw a fur seal too! I tried to take lots of pictures but I had to give up after a while because they didn't really do it any justice. The weather up to that point had been great and really sunny, but it changed once we were on the boat and became very cold and cloudy. We were still lucky though because that area has over 200 days of rain a year, and the rain is measured in metres instead of inches. It didn't rain when we were there so I was just glad of that! We had to spend more time inside the boat than we would have liked though as it was so cold.

Once the boat cruise had finished we just drove straight back to Te Anau on the coach which was good as everyone was pretty tired by that point. We ended up getting back at about 5 ish, just in time to get back before dark. We were cold and tired, but it had been a great day!