Sound!

Now I know that I have banged on about cold wintery mornings before, but on THIS morning the other campers were having to de-ice their various vehicles whilst I wandered past, bleary-eyed and searching for the toilets. It was so cold that I had had to reach out from the sleeping bag to switch the heater on for 20 minutes before I could rouse myself and leave the comfort and relative warmth of my makeshift bed. It was a decent enough morning, but I wanted clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine for the day as it we would be heading north towards Milford Sound.

Over a year ago I had taken part in a walking challenge at work where you wear a pedometer and enter your steps for the day onto the website and it plots your teams progress from one “starting” point across the world. Progress was going well, until Humberto broke my foot playing football two weeks later and kinda put a stop to all that. But I digest. The starting point for my team (Reservoir Clogs) was in Milford Sound. I had never heard of the place before doing the walking challenge, but after chucking the words into Google (other search engines are available……but they are naff) I saw a magical scene in front of my eyes. I knew that I wanted to get there one day, and much like the Leaning Tower of Wanaka photo (see yesterdays post) I felt that I just had to get there and have another “moment”.

It was one road from Te Anau to Milford Sound so there was no chance of us getting lost. But that wasn’t the problem we first encountered. We had only realised that there were no gas stations along the way until we had set off and I had thumbed through another pamphlet in addition to the guide book, but by that point we were already a fair way along the highway so felt it was too far to turn back and fill up. We had about ¾ of a tank left, and had at least a two hour journey there and the same again back, but would we have enough juice? There may be a gas station in Milford Sound, but given the remoteness of the place I doubted that a petrol tanker would make it through the winding roads to top it up. So with that in the back of our minds we continued our journey, catching up with, overtaking and then being caught up at the next viewpoint by any number of caravans and coaches you care to mention.

The route has been described as the best road journey in the world, and I can see why. Not long after setting off we were enjoying the sight of mountains in front of the dashboard and lush green forests out of each passenger window. The first proper stop-off was Mirror Lakes. A small lake with a number of viewpoints which have the image above the water reflected back in the water in almost perfect symmetry. It wasn’t exactly a looking-glass, as there were a number of ducks messing up the mirror effect. I half thought about trying to scare them off so that I could get the perfect photograph, but there were about 50 Chinese tourists around us so I would have looked like a lunatic. Even so, very dramatic images, but it was soon time to move on to the next stop. Further down the line we had a brief snow-ball fight, just for the fun of it and to show that we were so high up in the mountains that the snow was still lying on the ground even in the brilliant sunshine. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. As we had got nearer to Milford Sound the weather had got much better, the sun had come out and burned away the early morning clouds.

Mirror Lakes (if you can read it!)

When we finally arrived at our destination we were not disappointed. The pyramid-shaped mountain of Mitre Peak jutting out into the bay was spectacular, and looked astonishing in the sun and calm waters. For all the other tourists we had seen heading towards Milford Sound it was strangely quiet. Well, apart from the diggers and workmen down by the harbour. Unfortunately they were extending the harbour so it wasn’t a picture postcard scene in panoramic view as there were tall cranes and all manner of JCBs surrounding the boats and dock area. A shame, but it still didn’t take anything away from the fantastic view which we had come so far for. We also saw the grave of Donald Sutherland (not the actor) and his wife Elizabeth, the first settlers in the area, and a duck-type creature follow us along a small trail thinking we might lob some food his way. Oh, and there were Sand Flies……LOTS of Sand Flies!

Milford Sound

We had seen a couple of walks on the way to Milford Sound that we had ear-marked for the journey back and we pulled in to one on the return trip back towards Te Anau. The full hike was 4 days long and ended up at Queenstown, so we just decided to have a stroll along the first part and turn back as and when we fancied it. We ended up hiking up and up and up, until we saw a sign for a hut 15 minutes away. We still had time on our hands so we headed down to find it. It was a pleasant little hut with plenty of bunk beds to house people doing the hike. We were never gonna make it to the summit so we tramped back to the campervan and headed for one of the DOC campsites on the main road. The one we had picked out, at Lake Gunn, had a place for a fire and was positioned by the side of the lake. Unfortunately there were already a number of people there, and one was starting a fire, so we climbed back into the camper and set off for the next one. 5 minutes down the road we pulled in to Cascade Creek, which was empty and had TWO fire pits. We parked up and got a fire on the go; not for any real reason, but we had just set our minds on getting a roaring fire going. After a few false starts we managed to get one going even though most of the wood was soaking wet. So now we were stinking of smoke and I got a peppered steak soup on the go and piled on the layers for what would more than likely turn out to be the coldest night yet.