Day 146 - Milford Sounds, South Island - Friday 9th, Saturday 10th March 2012

This morning we had a few "admin" jobs to do at the bungy shop. The videos of us jumping and the photos we had paid for would not down load from their internet site which was really annoying. So we told the staff our problems and they asked us to wait an hour whilst they got the site where we did the bungy to sort it. So we waited in the shop and used their internet until an hour later when we were told that the problem wouldn't be sorted until tomorrow. So we headed out the shop and checked out the rest of Queenstown and grabbed some coffee, we love these flat whites!! After our coffees we headed for the supermarket as the camper is quickly running out of food. We split into teams in the supermarket 20 mins later we met up; Soph had pasta, crackers, some spreads, a mint plant and other essentials. I had a massive packet of biscuits, marshmallows and an extra larger white chocolate bar… We both laughed and bought the lot. We loaded up the van and headed off to Crusade creek for the night - this is about ¾ of the way to Milford sounds where tomorrow we have our river cruise!

We were up bright and early to start the rest of our drive to Milford Sound ready for our 9am cruise. The scenery along the drive was brilliant but our favourite bit of the journey has got to be the Hommer tunnel - this is a tiny little tunnel that takes you through a huge mountain. To make things even more fun it has no lights in the tunnel and although they have recently installed traffic lights (the tunnel is so small that if you meet another car on the way down you just have to reverse all the way back again), they only get put on from 9am till 5pm - we arrived at 8am! So we stood at the start of the tunnel in our little camper and seeing that it was completely dark made the dash for it! It's nothing like the Dartford tunnel - the sides still look like they were cut out by hand and there is water gushing down the walls; it reminded us of a ride at Chessington World of Adventures!

We soon arrived at the ferry terminal of Milford Sounds and boarded our 'Juicy' cruise. First things first, we tucked into our free coffee and muffin and then went out on deck to take in the splendid views that Milford had to offer.

Milford Sound is 16km's in length and is the northern most of the 14 fiords that make up the coastline of the Fiordland National Park. The cruise was to take us through the Sound, show us the sights, and hopefully spot some wildlife (dolphins, seals and penguins call the Sound their home) - all within an hour and a half. The sight of Milford is beautiful but unfortunately NZ was having one of its bad days (in terms of weather - we've worked out we seem to get a day of sun and then two of rain and cloud. The weather is schizophrenic; one minute it's beautiful and then the next it's raining) which meant that the low lying cloud made everything look a little grey. The ship made its way down the Sound and along the way we saw lots of big waterfalls (the benefit of the rain!) including Bowen Falls, Fairy Falls and we even poked the ships nose into Bridal Veil Falls meaning that everyone on the front deck got completely soaked - well everyone else's waterproofs got wet and us not having waterproofs got soaked! We even spotted some seals larking about on a rock that is aptly named 'seal rock' and then just before we were due to head back we spotted the elusive Fiordland Crested penguin.

Back on land and we started our mammoth drive back towards Queenstown - the rest of the day was to be a driving day. We arrived in Queenstown just before five and headed straight for the bungy shop to try and sort out our photos and video - when we arrived they proudly presented us with two USB sticks with everything on and even a printed photo pack to say sorry. Ummmm only one problem - the man in the photos was not Adam! Oh dear……… an hour later we were finally sorted and so we started to drive out of Queenstown to find a spot to Freedom camp (free camping).

A couple of hours later we found ourselves at DOC site in between Lake Makaroa and the top of Lake Wanaka - we settled down for some dinner and to watch a film before bed.

Hold on, as we were lying in the dark trying to get to sleep I felt something big run over me - I turned the light on and looked around. Nothing……must be my imagination. 20 minutes later Ad shot up and cried that he had seen a mouse! Ahhh there's a mouse in the house - well camper. The next 3 hours entailed us trying to catch this bloody mouse - literally we sat in silence and motionless for hours trying to lure him in to catch him. We came very close a couple of times but as I wouldn't let Ad kill him (just catch him and then set him free) the mouse escaped at the last minute. 3am and defeated we fell asleep and let the mouse do what he needed to do…………………………