Today leaving early for the road to Milford Sound turned into leaving midmorning the perks of this is that by that time the clouds have gone leaving a blue sky and the tour buses are well ahead of us. We're very glad we've hired a car for this trip instead of being herded from viewpoint to viewpoint! No one can deny the Milford Road is amazing with open plains, steep cliff faces and powerful waterfalls. The drive time quickly increases when you want to stop every 100m to take in the view, our best stopping point was actually at an unmarked point by the side of the road where we had to look at for traffic on the one lane bridge as we were mesmerised by a waterfall. For me it is all in the water and Olof loves the vast mountains which means double the amount of stops! It's great when you stop at a place off the road and there is nobody else around looking out high above the valley floor, unfortunately that doesn't happen so often! Another awesome stop was The Chasm not quite a waterfall but a narrowing in the rocks where the water flows through with such power and they look so smooth. It looks like one crazy waterslide! By the time we arrived in Milford Sound it was gone two, we didn't have a cruise booked but we decided we'd regret coming away without doing one so booked onto the last one of the day at half past three. We are definitely glad we did, the views are everything you see in a photograph and more! We were on one of the smallest boats that cruise Milford so we could get up close and wet under the waterfalls that come from so high above you and we went right out to the Tasman Sea. It's an interesting place to be as well with half a metre of freshwater due to the amount of rainfall and if I remember rightly depths of 200 plus metres. On the way we saw seals catching the last of the sun of the rocks and on the way back we got to see what made the trip magical for me. Dolphins, strangely enough I have never seen them in the wild before and it completely made the trip to see them jumping and riding the surf of the boat. Back on land we had already decided we wasn't going to head back to Te Anau but camp on one of the sites along the Milford Road but we had the "first world problem" of not having any memory left on the camera so we needed electricity. A couple of kilometres from Milford Sound is a lodge which has tent and campervan sites so we bedded down there in the woods for the night, it was actually a great place right on the river. Our tent is becoming like a second home now and weirdly we sleeping pretty well!