We woke up to black sky and pouring rain and then snow- not what we had hoped for! The Kiwi Bus turned up 45mins late- there had been a huge dump of snow between Queenstown and Te anau and it very nearly didn't make it to us. The journey to Milford was eventful, the roads became quite snowy as we got nearer so we had to stop and put the chains on. Unfortunately the chains wouldn't stay on and at one point the whole chain snapped into various pieces as we were trying to get up a snowy hill in the 5km avalanche danger stretch of road! good! When we went round the other side of the mountain, there was no snow to be seen and the sun was out, it was great. Milford Sound is absolutely stunning, the mountains are all reflected in the stunning blue lake and there are seals and dolphins ( we didn't see any of those) and lots of waterfalls everywhere. The boat trip lasted 2 hours, where we were then left at the underwater observatory. This allowed us to look out under the lake and see all the fish and sea life, it looked a lot more tropical than i was expecting. Very pretty! After going a bit snap happy on the boat we were dropped back at the coach where we headed back to Queenstown for the night. Tomorrow Claire and i head off to Christchurch, back to being just the 2 of us again, its going to be quite strange after spending 6weeks in a big group! Then the plan is to fly out to Australia on the 27th! I'm praying for some warmer weather!!! love to you all tasha