Well as much as I loved the Magic bus (the hop on and off bus that takes you all around NZ) unfortunately it doesn't take you to one of New Zealand's best attractions, Milford Sound! Luckily enough I met a girl with a Bob Marley camper van who was willing to take me and one other person there! It had all the making of a Milford Sound road trip!

With our little van packed with enough snacks and drinks to sink a ship! The 3 of us set off in out little van through the winding roads and dramatic mountains of the south island on our 5 hour journey, fortunately enough we had a comedian in the van to entertain us all, and a MP3 player with Dutch, Chilean and English music so we happily wiled away the hours trying to 'educate' the others in each of our own music tastes (there really are some dodgy tunes out there!) while "oooo"ing and ""aaaahhh"ing at the scenery.

Eventually the roads started to straighten out, thank goodness the Chilean girl was used to driving very long distances in her home country! we eventually arrived at our stop off point of Te Anu. Te Anu is famous for its "tramping' (hiking) and is a small town surrounded by the most beautiful mountain range. Hence we stocked up on yet more sweets and water (the health freaks that we are) for the journey ahead, which was a 2 hour drive along a road renowned for it avalanches!!. Luckily we got there without a hitch (except a strict telling off from the police as we didn't have snow chains on!) The place where we were staying was the only place to sleep in the whole of Milford sound, it was 2 hours from anywhere and was a lovely swiss chalet type backpackers! Once there we made tea, drank wine, took silly pictures and chatted all night. Our plan for the next day was to get up early have some brekkie and go kayaking on the Milford sound itself, we had friends who had done similar before and had kyaked while dolphins swim around them! Even at this time of night you could see a bit of the Sound but as its rains for 300 out out 365 days in a year its made all the numerous waterfalls look much more full and seeing them by moonlight looked lovely.

What we didn't bank on the next day in the New Zealand spring was a snow dump!, so unfortunately the kayaking was cancelled! Luckily there was plenty of choice and room for us to go on a ferry tour around the Sound and a guided tour.

If i'm being all technical...Milford is actually a Fjord rather than a Sound - the difference being that a Fjord is created by a glacier the ice of which carves its way through the mountains and a Sound is greated by a river.

Just to give you an idea what the Milford Sound looks like when you are there...its loads of HUGE dramatic shaped mountains rising out of the still calm and very dark waters, when we were there the tops of the mountains were covered in snow from the recent snow dump and due to the heavy rainfall all the waterfall along the way were brimming with water. The time that we were on Milford Sound there was a dense eerie fog that hung in the air at the top of the mountains that made it look really beautiful in an errie Stephen King type way. Despite our eerie passage through the Sound and the Fjord land we still had time for a laugh and a giggle with people that we met on the boat from Israel and after some meeting some really nice Israeli's I think that's the next place that I would like to visit!