Day 2: Tuesday, February 26, 2002
Kayaking on Milford Sound

We slept a little later today, then got up quickly to make some arrangements. I called Milford Sound Sea Kayaks to see if we could get on their twilight kayak for that night and there was room, which was great. (You book the kayak through Adventure Fiordland, which seems to handle their bookings.) I also called a hotel in Nelson to book a room for the three nights we would be there. (It would be the weekend, so we wanted to be sure we could get a room.)

Milford Sound is about 4 hours from Queenstown and we had to get there by 4pm for the kayak, so off we went. It's about two hours to Te Anau, so we drove straight there without stopping for pictures, saving the time for the Milford Road, which is supposed to be gorgeous. The trip didn't start out well — we drove into town, which was the wrong direction, and while there I screwed up and didn't get into the left lane when going into a roundabout. Another car came up to my left, which startled me, so I drove into the roundabout when another car was coming. They stopped in time, so there was no damage, but then when I got through and pulled over to figure out where we were, they drove up along side us (blocking traffic, I might add), honked, and yelled at us for not looking where we were going. A very un-Kiwi experience. Walendo thinks they were British, though that's not a very British reaction either. Walendo was more pissed off than I was, since I had screwed up, but still, it was not a nice way for them to handle it. Finally we figured out how we'd gone wrong, turned around and headed out of town the right way.

Red Tussock Hotel Te Anau, NZ

Room at Red Tussock Hotel

The drive to Te Anau is quite pretty. We drove along the east side of the lake for about 50km, winding our way along the rocky shore, which was quite scenic. Again it was a beautiful, sunny day — we'd been very lucky about that. After we passed the lake it straightened out and turned into pretty rolling hills. I wished we could stop for pictures but resisted because we didn't have that much time. We got into Te Anau at about 12 noon (about 2 hours). We had about an hour to get a hotel and dump our stuff, pick up the tickets for the kayak in town, and grab some stuff for lunch and then dinner after the kayak. (We wouldn't get back until late when all the restaurants would be closed.) We found a hotel quickly — the Red Tussock Motel, which had a nice large room with a little kitchen area for a good price (NZ$115, about US$50). The woman said the whole town had been booking up quickly, so we were glad we'd gotten there early to get a place for that night. We were less efficient about lunch and getting the tickets.

We found the tourist booth where you get the tickets, but the guy couldn't find the paper he needed. He could see that we had booked and we were listed as on the tour, but he needed a certain slip of paper. I wondered why he didn't just write up another ticket, but he seemed to need this ticket, so I asked if I could come back after we did other errands, which he said was fine. We had a bit of trouble finding a place for a quick bite that had appealing food but we settled on one. Walendo had a sandwich that looked like two halves of a sandwich cut on the diagonal wrapped in paper, but it turned out to be just three half slices with something in between each slice, so it was sort of a 3/4 of a sandwich, strange. He liked it, though. My chicken satay sandwich was weird, and I gave half of it to Walendo.

Then Walendo went to the supermarket while I went back to get our ticket for kayaking. He had called the owner to find out what happened to the piece of paper he needed but couldn't reach her, and in the end he wrote out another ticket. Odd system, but at least we were booked. By the time we left, it was around 1:15, which didn't give us much time to take pictures along the way, oh well. I don't like rushing like this, but the chance to kayak in Milford Sound on a gorgeous day seemed worth it. We were quite lucky with the weather. It's usually raining at the Sound, so a brilliant clear day is quite rare.

Skittish sheep walk around our car along Milford Road

It turned out drive to Milford Sound took only 1.5 hours, not 2 hours, so we got there with an hour to spare. At one point we were driving along and suddenly we saw a big herd of sheep walking up the road in our direction, with a trail of cars behind it. We stopped and the sheep nervously walked around us. It was quite a sight. They're very skittish and some of the sheep didn't want to go anywhere near the car. Some froze just before they got to us, not sure what to do. Others climbed up along the far hill rather than stay on the road and get close to us. We got some great pictures with the digital camera of the sheep flooding around the car. An amusing highlight.

River along Milford Road

We stopped just once more for pictures, along a river with giant boulders and gorgeous mountains in the background. Until you got to the mountains, the road was mainly grazing land with hills in the background. Then when the road entered the mountain area it was quite pretty, but it wasn't as amazing as I'd expected. Frommer's guide book said it was one of the most spectacular drives in the world, but I wouldn't agree. Certainly beautiful, but not worth that much praise. Of course, the Milford tunnel is quite impressive. It's carved out of one of the giant mountains along the fiords, so you feel like a tiny ant going through a little ant hole in a massive mountain.

Along the drive from Queenstown to Milford, Walendo re-told me the story of how he and Chris had gotten together when he was in NZ 11 years ago. It was really interesting, especially now that I had context for all the places he talked about. He also told me how they'd rented a motorcycle and driven down here to Milford Sound. But when he went into the tunnel, he'd gotten stuck in 4th gear and he was behind a bus, so he couldn't pass. Yikes, quite a scary situation. Of course he'd managed to fix the bike himself, and was fine on the way back.

Milford isn't really a town, it's just the end of the road. There's a hostel-like lodge there, which is where we waited for the kayak group. We didn't realize you could stay there, but it sounded like they got booked up way in advance, so it wouldn't have worked to just call that day anyway.

Getting ready to kayak Milford Sound

The kayaking turned out to be a wonderful experience. It was a pretty small operation but well run and we felt like it was a "real" experience, not just part of an experience-producing machine. It started in the lodge at 4pm when we met our kayak guide, Horey, and two other couples: Eileen and Scott from Durango, Colorado, and Mike and Nick from Southampton, England. It was a good group. After getting the preliminary stuff out of the way, Horey drove us down a short ways in their van to the dock area. He had a tent set up, where he gave us everything we needed, including thermal pants, thermal top, fleece, waterproof top, then life jacket. Nearly everything was purple, which made me happy. There was a lot of good natured joking during the dressing process, with Eileen noting that my shorts matched the purple theme. Nick especially seemed like a funny guy.

Horey getting into kayak from boat

We got into the motor boat, to which they strapped the four kayaks (three doubles for the three pairs and a single for Horey). Then we motored out about 10km into the fiord. That was an experience in itself. It was pretty choppy out there, so the boat was slamming into the waves at high speed. It reminded us of our power boat adventure on Lake Powell a few years ago. (They take us out in a power boat so we can kayak with the current on the way back. Going against the current can really wear you down and you don't cover that much ground.) When we got to a certain spot, the boat driver and Horey untied the kayaks and we entered them from the boat, which was easier to do than it sounds.

Our group kayaking Milford Sound

First we paddled further down the fiord so we could see some seals that Horey said often hung out there. They were there and we got to check them out. That was neat. Then we started heading back with the waves and wind at our back. The scenery was just amazing. The fiords rise up out of the water about 200 stories high at about a 70 degree angle. (I'd guessed it was about 60 stories but then Horey said it was 200. Your sense of scale is distorted here in this land of giants.) Even though the mountains are sheer rock, there are beech trees lining most of them. Horey explained that they grow with their roots interlocking each other, so that an entire hillside will be interconnected. Sometimes some of the trees grow so heavy that they rip off the mountain and all the trees on that cliff-face come tumbling down, which is called a tree avalanche. We saw some evidence of that — cliffs that had much younger vegetation on them (mostly lichen and ferns, which grow first and form the basis for the tree roots).

Kayking under Milford Sound waterfall

After a little while, we reached Sterling Falls, which was a huge waterfall. Apparently, there are only a few permanent waterfalls on the Sound. Usually it rains a lot and there are hundreds of waterfalls from excess rain, but since it hadn't been raining that much lately there were only a few. Still, the ones that were there were beautiful. Horey showed us how to kayak right underneath the waterfall, so we all tried it. As you get close, the wind gets very strong and it's hard to make your way though — meanwhile, you're getting quite a shower. It was exhilarating! We watched the other struggle their way through and laughed. That was fun.

Horey, our guide on Milford Sound

At another point, Horey had us paddle right up to the rock and face our kayaks away from it and then lean back, looking up. You really got a sense of just how huge these mountains are. Of course they're even bigger cuz they continue down below the water. Horey said the change from elevation to depth was the second steepest in the world (after Mauna Kea in Hawaii).

As we paddled along, sometimes we'd catch the wave as if we were surfing, which was fun. We paddled pretty well together. We tried taking pictures from time to time, but it was hard to keep the camera stable. Mostly, we just cruised along and absorbed being in such a gorgeous place. It was entirely clear with just a few pretty clouds sitting part-way down some of the rocks, perfect.

Unfortunately the kayak was a little small for Walendo. He was in the back and he was the one who steered. The foot pedals didn't adjust far enough down so he had to pull his feet back to reach them, which made his legs go numb. After a while, we just pulled up the rudder and steered with the paddles, which was easier on him.

Milford Sound waterfall with rainbow

About 2/3 through, we stopped and made a raft by lining up the boats together. Horey gave us a little snack: a hot yarrow drink and some "scroggin" which is gorp with more stuff, quite tasty. (The letters stand for things, but we couldnt't remember them, except it included chocolate & raisins and the last part was "imagination and nuts.") It was good to get a snack, since we were skipping dinner. It was still quite choppy so we had to be careful when passing around the food. The group was in a good mood and people were kidding around. When we were splitting up again, we had to sort out who got which oar. Scott looked at Nick and asked whether there was one he wanted, and Nick said, "No, either oar." Heh heh. We both thought it was pretty funny but were caught up in what we were doing too much to laugh sufficiently. He got gypped his full laughter. Ealier, Horey told us that Milford Sound was originally named Milford Haven after a Welsh town. Nick joked, "Oh, so the Welsh have done something." Funny how the English rank on the other countries in GB.

We made our way back, taking our time and enjoying the ride. It was nice that we got to go at our own pace with no sense of rushing. At one point we split off from the group to go to the shore, where Walendo thought he could collect a rock for our travel fountain. When we got there, the little rocks turned out to be boulders. Again, scale is hard to judge here.

Milford Sound at twilight Sound waterfall

Finally as it became twilight the water flattened out and it became very quiet. As we made our way back to the bay where we'd entered, we looked back and were awed by the scene. The sun was down and the mountains were silhouettes against a deep blue sky, a magical scene. As we entered the bay, there were fishing boats along the shore, which added to the pretty scene. We all took our time making our way back to shore. What a wonderful experience.

Once on shore, we changed back into our clothes. Nothing had gotten wet and the water had been pretty warm, so I'd never gotten cold, amazing. Walendo picked up a rock here for the travel fountain. Horey drove us back to the lodge and we said our goodbyes, exchanging email addresses so we could send people pictures of them in the kayaks. (Much easier than the old days when you mailed prints.) Then we drove the 90 minutes back to Te Anau. There was no one on the road, so even though it was dark and windy, it was a pleasant drive. We got back to the hotel in Te Anau at about 10pm. We made a quick dinner from the stuff we'd bought that afternoon, and then showered so we could get out quickly the next day. (We had booked tickets on the Doubtful Sound tour, and we had to be in Manapouri at 8:30, about 30 minutes away). As we went to bed, Walendo giggled himself to sleep as he kept thinking about the "either oar" joke.

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