Saturday morning saw us negotiating Queenstown again, as we went into - and quickly out of it, en route to Milford Sound and the Fiordlands of South West New Zealand. Initially the landscape was still full of mountains and lakes. The range which borders Queenstown is called 'The Remarkables', which I found quite amusing as I imagined people seeing them for the first time and saying "Quite remarkable!" and apparently I'm still slowly driving Tony insane! Later the landscape flattened out into an area of rolling hills and flat pastures, and we stopped at a little isolated farm shop in a place called Athol Valley to buy some lovely fresh veg. We chatted for ages to the lovely lady who ran it, about what life was like living in such a remote area. She has a 10 year old daughter who goes to a school in the area which has only 18 pupils in the whole school. Her older daughter is 14, and has to go to a secondary school in Invercargill as a weekly boarder, as there aren't any secondary schools within a 2 hour drive of where they live. I was asking her about maternity care, and again, the nearest hospital would be in Invercargill, so babies are frequently born in cars on the way to hospital. Women can't really opt for home births as there are only a few independent midwives, who cover vast areas, and no 'community midwives' as we know it in the "North Southlands" area at all. We're so lucky to have the NHS, for all its faults, and our women are so fortunate that they have such a lot of choice!

As we passed Te Anau, and entered "Lord of the Rings" country, the weather started to close in. It grew cold and misty, started raining and the landscape became more mountainous again. By the time we reached Milford itself, the rain was torrential, and the clouds so low that peaks suddenly appeared out of nowhere in front of us - we were very glad we hadn't booked one of the 'scenic flights' over the area! We managed to get an unpowered pitch at a campsite very near Milford, so we could go on an early cruise on the Fiord in the morning. So we had gas, but no electricity, so we quickly rustled up an evening meal before it got too dark. I wasn't too worried as I had my head torch, but Tony's seemed to have been turned on in his bag, so the battery had run out. Luckily I also had my wind -up torch, so Tony was able to use that and I had my head torch on to read my book. The trouble was tha every time I turned to say something to Tony, I eneded up blinding him with my super-bright halogen bulbs shining in his eyes! It carried on pouring with rain all night, and in the morning the puddles outside the van had turned into small lakes, which made it tricky getting to the shower block! We later found out there had been 126mm of rain between 8pm and 8am, which is quite normal in that area!

We went on the 9am "breakfast cruise" which served a generous light breakfast, and unlimited hot drinks. We needed those, as it was pretty cold and still pouring with rain. Unfortunately we couldn't see the iconic view of Mitre peak (which is only ever shown in photographs as a snow capped peak against a clear blue sky) or indeed anything much at all along the fiord because of the dense mist. What we did see were hundreds of waterfalls cascading down the rock face beside us as we sailed along, some of them were so powerful that it got really windy near them. On the way back, 4 of us got off the boat at the discovery centre, which has an observatory 10 meters under the water - very interesting to see all the different fish and other deep sea creatures who can live there because the water is so dark. Our guide was Irish, and very funny as well as very knowledgable, so we really enjoyed the tour. We caught another boat back to Milford, but the weather still hadn't improved enough to get any clear photos, so we decided to head back and made our way to Invercargill for the night. Nearly up to date now, so I'll leave at that for now......