Up close and personal

Wow, what a day! After a day of constant drizzle yesterday, we awoke to a clear sky in Fiordland - this is, firstly, very unusual for Fiordland, which is (according to the Rough Guide) the second rainiest place on earth after the rainforests of Tahiti and, secondly, a big stroke of luck given that we were due to get out on Milford Sound for a day of kayaking... but before I get into that, a quick geography lesson (Mrs Ballard, apologies for the brevity, please feel free to correct me and embellish on my ramblings on our message board!)

Fiordland is in south-west NZ, and is made up of many 'sounds' which in fact should be called 'fiords' as they are waterways carved out by glaciers, whereas 'sounds' are waterways carved out by rivers. So in the Fiordlands, when you're on the water, you're surrounded by imposing mountains which climb straight up from sea level (so no proper beaches for me to laze around on here then!) the highest of which in Milford Sound is a mountain called Mitre Peak at 1700 metres (2nd highest of it's type in the world fact fans!)

Today we were lucky enough to get up close and personal with the fiords and wildlife on Milford Sound. Sitting in our kayak we were dwarfed by the mountains and waterfalls, and I'm sure the pictures don't do them justice or give enough sense of perspective. Luckily we had the foresight to practice our kayaking for an hour on Lake Wanaka a few weeks ago, although that didn't seem to stop us being the last in our group to arrive at places of interest - although I'm not sure if that's down to us being novices or the fact that we were dawdling and taking too many photos!

Unfortunately we didn't get to see any of the Fiordland Crested Pingus which Frank mentioned before, but we did see a few New Zealand Fur Seals sunning themselves on the rocks and playing up close to the kayaks. The good news is we're due to go to Doubtful Sound on Thursday (weather-permitting) to get back out on a kayak, and this time for 2 days, with an overnight stay at a private campsite. This is the quieter (though considerably larger) sister of Milford, and we might get a few sneaky peaks at pingus... here's hoping! Enjoy the photos!

Cx

PS Sorry there are actually no photos of this trip to put on here at the mo as I wrote this back in April and the photos are now back on the hard drive at home! Which is a better place to be than at the bottom of Doubtful Sound (see future entry "Back on the water"... )