Queenstown - Te Anau - Milford Sound

Knees still knocking, it was time to get back to nature, so off I set on a day trip to Milford Sound.

The day didn't start too well, primarily due to the fact that I had to get up at 6am. Then things got worse as I got on the bus to be greeted by a wave of "Konichi Was" & a couple of "Howdys". Yes I was stranded on a bus comprising of 32 Japanese tourists & 5 Gringos. Only one thing to do, stick on the iPod and hope that there are no group games involved in the trip.

The drive to Te Anau was uneventful. The driver gave us a couple of interesting facts about NZ - for example did you know that the only indigenous "land" mammal to NZ is a rare type of bat?? All the other species i.e. rabbits, sheep, possums, deer, alpacas etc. were brought in by the first European settlers.

After Te Anau things got spectacular rather quickly. The day was bright and sunny (one of the few days in the year) and there had been a fresh snowfall the night before so that the mountains had an icing sugar coating. We stopped for a gander at the so called "Mirror lakes" and for the first time since I saw a girl naked (two years ago), my jaw literally dropped open. They were incredible - in the background you have lofty 2000 meter mountains, in the middle you have a beautiful golden coloured grass landscape and beside the lakes you have palms and ferns. The lakes then mirror this so perfectly that I considered bottling the stuff and using it to shave. If you stood on your head you would not have known what was real and what was reflection.

Onwards towards Milford we stopped at a place called "The Chasm" (Christian brother educated people will not know how to pronounce this correctly). This is basically a river which has cut its way through limestone like a chainsaw through butter. The water bashes against the rocks with a force that would break a man in two. More open mouth antics and I had to take another 20 photos. This was in stark contrast to the Japanese who shuffled quickly (Japanese don't actually run, it's a myth) to the best Photo op, got each other to take pictures of themselves waving and waddled back to the bus. I don't think they actually looked at the landscape without the aid of a viewfinder.

We arrived in Milford about 5 hours later and if at all possible, things got even better. 500 meter waterfalls, seals, dolphins, mountains that reared up out of the ocean to tower 2000 meters above us. Superlatives fail me, it was that amazing. The boat trip only lasted an hour and a half but my brain had already beauty overload.

Back at the harbour at 3pm and we had a long bus ride back to Queenstown ahead of us. Then a nice young lady asks me if I would perhaps be interested in a scenic flight back. Out came the credit card and thirty minutes later I was sitting in a tiny Cessna with all 5 Americans as it careened down the bumpy runway and hurtled skywards, the engine sounding like a souped up lawnmower. The flight was ??? (please click to find a nice adjective), we could see for hundreds of kilometres and it was like something from the cover of a Swiss chocolate box.

We touched down shortly after and the courtesy taxi took me back to my hostel. Not the cheapest of days, but without much doubt I have never seen so much natural beauty in one day. Book a flight and go and see it!