Never seen drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with oriental women

February 10

It took us a while to get ready this morning, and we made a lot of trips back and forth to the car. Ian and Wes went to find an outdoor store to replace our broken tent pole (did I mention I broke a tent pole? It happened on the 7th, and we improvised a two-pole tent at the Holiday Park on the 8th, using rope tied on a water jug on either side of the tent to keep it taut). They found one that would do a repair, but not before 10, when our parking expired and we wanted to be on the road.

So, car finally packed but tent pole still out of action, we sat down for breakfast at the Orange Cafe, on the same block as our hostel. Zach and I ordered the eggs on toast breakfast and discovered that all of the breakfasts come with more toast. This amounts to six slices of toast for each of us, plus a lot of spreads. The eggs were poached in some sort of bowl a little smaller than a slot in a cupcake pan. It made the egg look somewhat like jello in that it resembled no particular organic shape. It was, at least, a very interesting way to serve eggs. It was probably easy to make, too. The most interesting part of breakfast, though, was marmite. "New Zealand's vegetarian spread" was a yeast spread and tasted like it -- to Zach, at least. To me, it tasted like soy sauce and was not something I wanted on my bread or really anything for breakfast. Though Zach didn't like it either, he "could see people liking it on toast". I can't.

The somewhere we're going to is Mt. Cook. We're just cutting a day off our stay in the South Island and moving our ferry back to the 14th (we managed this with nothing more than a phone call. Apparently we can even use the same ticket). Our first stop on the way is the Moeraki Boulders, a collection of very spherical boulders on a beach, and the location of the cover photo of Ian's guide book. Some of the boulders are cracked open like eggs or giant pokeballs. Others are shattered into dozens of pieces, none of which have been noticeably rounded into smaller spheres. I find these shards almost as interesting as the whole boulders.

Our next stop was supposed to be a blue penguin sanctuary, but the only ones we saw were in the gift shop. We did see a seal sunning itself on the rocks in front of us, making it the third one we've been close enough to walk to (assuming none of them were sea lions), the fourth one we've been within 10 meters of, and the umpteenth one we've seen at all. I didn't realize there would be quite so many of them.

I was reading ferociously to get to the end of my book while we were driving, so I didn't go in with the guys when they stopped to get salmon. It was a fishery that we stopped at, and visitors were apparently allowed to feed the fish for free. From what I heard, the fish were just as frenzied as the paid variety. We bought a 2.2kg salmon and got back on the road.

We had to stop for a few sheep on the way

 

We paid our fee at the registration center at Mt. Cook before we went to the tent site. It was $6/person and we payed entirely in coins. Most of them were $1 and $2 coins, though 13 of mine were not :). We had no ill-will for the cashier; we just are not used to having this quantity, or this value, of change.

After the briefest of looks at our camp site, and a briefer debate about whether to upgrade to a cabin to avoid the rain (we chose not to), we headed off to walk a few trails and cook dinner. Barely having started the first trail, Ian wanted to veer off and climb a small hill. I told him I would if he did, and we charged. The charging didn't last long. The vegetation on the hill, combined with its quickly increasing slope, tired us out pretty quickly. We eventually had to crawl up the hill, using our hands on the ground for balance as well as rest. Toward the top, we started running into bushes that had long, but shockingly strong and sharp, leaves. Ian pricked his leg on one, but I only brushed mine enough to infer its piercing power. When we reached the top, we discovered our conquest to be a disappointingly narrow ridge, with barely enough flat ground to rest on and no chance of descending the other side (which was covered in not surprisingly sharp bushes), at the base of which Zach and Wes were contentedly following the trail.

"It makes you appreciate how tall those mountains are," I noted. We took a few minutes to catch our breath and then scurried back down the side we had worked so hard to climb. I enjoyed the exercise. Ian complained of being out of shape and we both want to exercise more while in Auckland. The simple act of buying/hiring ("rent" = "hire") a bike may go a long way toward that goal, given how hilly the city is.

By the time we caught up with Zach and Wes, the trail was almost as high as our ridge had been, but it was much easier to climb. We eventually reached the end of the trail and found it to be much higher, but still easier to climb than our hill. Perhaps there is something to be said for the many long, winding paths that have led us, by car and on foot, around the rippling landscape of New Zealand.

The track led to a glacial lake. We recognized the Grey color of the water right away, but the glacier was much less noticeable. Though it's just on the other side of some mountains from the Fox & Franz Josef glaciers we saw a week ago, this one, covered in rock and barely distinguishable, has a very different look. We notice what look like kayakers down in the lake. We sit looking at the lake and its floating ice for a while (long enough to realize the "kayaks" have motors), and go back down to the carpark to start the next trail... which again leads to the lake. We could have gone all the way down to water's edge this time, but the motorized kayaks were being pulled on shore there and we didn't want force our way through. When we were sick of the bugs and ready to start cooking, we went once again back to the carpark.

The fish, as with much of our food, was Zach's territory; he was the only one of us who had ever filleted one (though he couldn't believe that I, living on a lake, had never done it). He washed it in a stream and started slicing it on a picnic table. Those ubiquitous bugs started into us again, and when Zach was finished he decided we should drive somewhere else before cooking it. This turned out to be a good decision, as there were far fewer bugs on the lookout where we stopped. The fish was great, though we all agreed we could have gotten more of it. This seems to be recurring theme with our meals: they look like a lot of food while we're buying and preparing it, but it never really fills us all up -- the closest we've gotten was the mutton and cous cous dinner.

After wiping down the dishes with a paper towel (we didn't want to use our water jugs for cleaning, given that we were within driving distance of sinks), it was time to set up camp. The campground was already rather populated when we first drove through it, but we managed to find a nice little spot that was surrounded by trees and not close to any other tent. We wanted as much isolation as possible because we were planning on another game of caveman poker and didn't want to keep anyone up. Worried about rain, we had decided earlier to try to use our broken pole. Ian and Wes wrapped it in duct tape and slid it into place. It worked! I'm sure the tent has less structural integrity than it did before, but the pole is at least strong enough to keep the tent and the rain fly taut, which is what we want if there's a downpour. It's not yet 10:00, so we decide to do the poker game. The chips this time are small rocks, straw, and big rocks. We decided after the last game that it would be much more fun to have something heavy for our most valuable chip, so we each picked out five of the largest rocks by the tent. This wasn't enough for Zach, who wandered away toward what looked like a rocky (dry) river bed in search of the biggest rocks he could carry.

At stake this time was doughnuts. We decided to get them for breakfast some morning, and the winner will get some larger number than everyone else -- we were a little vague about the details. The game was fun. Zach especially made use of his 20-chip stones, dramatically lifting them into the center every time he bet them. I won some number of doughnuts, Wes made a midnight Ramen soup (which I spilled my entire share of), and we went to sleep for the night, cramped in the tent that sleeps four very tightly, hoping it didn't rain.

Dunedin

February 9

This morning we set a new record for late starts. The plan was to get up “whenever”, so when I woke up at 8:40 and everyone was still asleep I just sneaked out to the kitchen to catch up on my blogging. We didn't eat breakfast until about 11:00 and weren't on the road until exactly 12:00. After some debate about whether to take the coastal road (answered in an affirmative), we were on our way. We made a few short stops at scenic areas, but one that I particularly enjoyed was a gorgeous beach with a cute anti-littering sign put up by a local 6^th grade class. What made the beach pretty also made it fun: there was a small island just a few meters out from the edge of the beach (as the tide then stood), and waves would crash into themselves after wrapping around it. Even better, if you timed it right (or were barefoot or didn't care about your shoes), you could run out to this island, climb it, and see the waves from above.

As is typical for me, the first thing I did on top of the island was to see how far out I could go. I was close to the edge when I found that the island was split by a small channel of water which was – almost – uncrossable. I went down into the gap that separated the two sides, waited, jumped, climbed, and found myself on the rock responsible for some of the cooler wave effects I've ever seen. Seaweed was thrown all about, waves climbed, crashing up and over rocks and into each other. I was beaming. One of my favorite bits of wave-rock interaction was a stone ramp that some of the bigger waves would hit, break on, and go flying off the edge at the top.

Before long, we arrived in Dunedin. The first hostel we went to (after climbing the steepest hill I've ever seen, which we couldn't believe wasn't the steepest hill in the world (which is also here)) had only two beds left. We called and found one that could accommodate us, checked in, and then drove off to explore the Otago Peninsula.

I have to confess that the drive on the peninsula lulled me to sleep with effortless ease. Being unconscious through most of the drive, I can only assume it was comparable to the places we stopped. And these were very pretty pastoral views. We have returned to gently rolling hills, most of which were sheep farms here. The ocean and the bodies of water touching it seemed to always be in view, and the sky was, for most of the day, beautifully blue and clear. We followed Portabello road all the way to the end of the peninsula, where we definitely did not want to pay the cost of the albatross tour. We just ate our tuna sandwiches in a public area there, fending off some brave seagulls who seemed to know no fear. As we ate, we were able to make out an albatross flying in the distance. It was a majestic bird and none of us saw it flap its wings the whole time it flew. When we were done eating, we stood at the fence at the edge of the cliff looking down toward the ocean, and overheard a guide pointing out an albatross to his clients. It took off from the water, flying centimeters from the surface, and failed to get enough lift to make it up the cliff. The guide informed us (indirectly) that the bird was unlikely to come back.

We stayed at the fence as they left, looking down at a lot of seagulls, a few seals, and a bird we never identified. Suddenly, there was an albatross that did have enough lift. We witnessed it rising just in front of our section of cliff. It circled and then flew right past us, giving us a far closer view than I ever would have expected. Happy at how much we got to see of the birds without paying a thing, we got back in the car and drove.

About half a dozen sheep ran out over the road. Sheep crossing! Ian pulled out his camera while we waited for them to pass. All but one of the next white heads over the hill stopped in their tracks, while the loner stood in the middle of the road for a few seconds. After it ran on, Ian took a few more pictures of the reluctant ones, waited to see what they would do, and slowly drove on when they stayed put. A random man on the road yelled at us to let us know that “you can't stop for sheep like that, mate! You'll turn a whole herd back down the hill!”

If you are driving in New Zealand and sheep run in front of your car, stop for a short a time as possible.

I woke up at another outlook. A sign nearby said that we could see the Chasm and Lover's Leap here. A sorely mistaken woman told us that the trail was only about 20 minutes. We set off. After walking through a very strange tunnel of trees (they had leaves only at the very top, and they were quite tall), we entered into a field and past a very old farm building. Walking a little further, we reached a huge field of sheep. The path to the Chasm actually took us into the field for a while, and then over a barbed wire fence.

I really should have been suspicious here.

The Chasm was pretty, and we stayed there for a few minutes before heading back into the field and up to the Lover's Leap. This path was entirely inside a sheep field, leading as close to the sheep as they were willing to let us get. This view was even better, and actually seemed even more like a chasm than the other one, in addition to being a leap. To top it off, there was a nice view of a lot of sheep dotting the hill below.

Then we tried to walk back.

Zach swore that the path was supposed to be a loop, though it didn't look like one to me. There was a tiny little rut of a path that kept going passed Lover's Leap, but I wasn't keen on following it. We did anyway and, sure enough, we found markings that indicated this was the more of the path, and it seemed to be looping back to finish a circle. But the path remained a rut. We were led over even more barbed wire, and the other side was not civilized. The width of trail we had to walk on steadily shrunk as it got increasingly overgrown. We eventually reached a part where it looked as if no one had used the trail since the person who first set it. Used to ticks and chiggers, I am horrified at the extent of the high grass and shrubbery I am going to have to walk through. Fortunately, this vegetation seems to be free from any such pests, and we make it out alive and mostly uninjured. Zach has a small rash on his hand from a leaf he brushed on the path, but it's going away and everyone else seems to be fine. Over an hour after we left the car, we get back in.

Back in Dunedin, we wander aimlessly through the streets, spending so much time trying to decide where to eat that restaurants start closing, and we end up at an Asian place. I order duck with rice, which is by far the slowest of our meals but very tasty. We make it outside just in time for it to start raining and rush to get everything we need in the hostel. I'm behind on my writing and so, after a shower, stay up past 2:00 am catching up on the blog.

Tomorrow we're... well, we're going somewhere. We seem to be a day ahead of ourselves and can't quite figure out what to do with the extra time. Stay posted.

The Catlins

February 8

I'm going to forbid Ian from even setting his watch alarm from now on. It has never woken us up. But somehow my iPhone alarm didn't either. I need to figure that out. We only overslept by about 20 minutes and still made it on the road before 7:00. We stopped in Invercargill for breakfast. The town's image is as funny as its name. Wes said it looked like Cheyenne, Wyoming with its brick buildings and general US western feel. We found a European restaurant for breakfast (though Siena questions its authenticity given that we received more than toast and milk for breakfast).

We're doing touring the Catlins today, largely following the eponymous Heritage Trail along the southern coast of the island. Our first stop was at a lighthouse. I would look up its name (I really don't remember it at all), but the lighthouse itself was probably the most irrelevant part of the stop. It was fenced off in a way that made it look like a decrepit prison and we just stayed away from it. The first thing I did take notice of was the toilet. I can tell you without a doubt this was the most luxurious non-flush toilet I've ever used. It's inside a wooden building and the room is huge; it has to run half the length of the whole building. The wood finish is beautiful. It even has a skylight built into the ceiling. There is absolutely no smell in the room, though that may be due to the shear size of the place, and the toilet, you can hear, is a remarkably long way above the waste bin below. After you're done, you can use the little sink conveniently placed in the room. Given that this sink and the toilet comprise the only things in the room, the excessive floor dimensions are really unnecessary. Moreover, I would have gladly traded the room, the skylight, and the wood paneling for hot water in the sink, or at least some soap. But as non-flush toilets go, I really can't complain.

The stop got better from there! Wes and I witnessed a moonwalking seagull in one of the tide pools. I can't explain what caused it to spastically kick its legs like that, but its flourishes and its backward movement forced us to conclude that it was making a Michael Jackson tribute. Ian joined us shortly afterward (by way of ninja-crawl through the grass), and we were all motioned over to the other side of the beach by Zach. He had found a seal! Or a sea lion! We really weren't sure which, but it was impressive either way. We stayed back the 10-20 meters that were supposed to be a safe perimeter and made sure not to get between it and the ocean (the signs have trained us well). The poor creature was really just trying to catch some z's on the sunny beach, but it kept being attacked by bugs. Its defense against this assault was to throw sand on itself, but none of it seemed to reach high enough on its back, where the bugs were paying particular attention to some exposed flesh through a gash in its fur. As big as it was, it seemed cute and garnered a lot of sympathy from us for its bug woes.

The next stop on the trail was a big one: the southernmost point of the south island! 

This was the farthest south any of us had been in our lives, and will likely be the farthest south any of us ever go. It was tantalizing to see a rocky ledge below us jutting further south into the sea, but there was really no way of getting down there. Instead, Ian and I continued an earlier rock-throwing competition to see who could, for now and forever, get a stone to a lower longitude than the other.

I think I won.

Reluctantly journeying north for the first time on our trip, we next made our way to a fossilized forest. Though it wasn't much to see at a distance, the rocky ground revealed, up close, the clearly distinguishable stone casts of long-dead trees. It was a unique experience to tap on something that looks for all the world like would and feel nothing but cold, hard, rock. We did our best to find the penguins that the conservation signs so gravely warned us to keep our distance from (if you get too close to the babies, they will jump in the sea too early and die. If you get too close to the mother, it will jump back in the sea with the babies' food and they will die), but there wasn't a single one to be seen.

Nor did we have any luck with dolphins at Porpoise Bay, where we stopped for lunch (ham, cheese, and mayo. And some crackers. And some German cookies). What we did see there was a deranged seagull. The gulls here, perhaps used to being fed by people, liked to cluster in a large group near where we were eating. Mostly they stood still, looking around with an apparent expression of indifference. One of them, though, was insane. It would lower its head to the ground, open its mouth as wide as possible, and screech at any neighboring bird. Unsatisfied with the effect this had on its nonchalant fellows, the bird would then proceed to chase one of them, on foot, screeching the whole time. The harassed victim would scurry away. If Psycho was satisfied, it would start again on a fresh target. If not, it would jump at the fleeing bird, completely miss, and carry on screeching at whatever bird it landed by, as if that was the one it meant to chase the whole time. Eventually Ian got tired of the lot of them and ran around in a circle, chasing them all away.

 Sandwiches finished in peace, we decided to skip the next stop or two in favor of sea caves. I promptly fell asleep on entering the car and woke up hazily in the sea cave carpark. I slowly pieced together that entrance to the caves cost $5. Ian was strongly opposed to this (though he confessed later that this was largely brought on by the grumpiness of awaking from his own nap), but was dragged out of the car anyway. We coughed up the money at the gate, waited for the talkative group of kids in front of us to get a head start, and headed down the trail. A short walk through a forest took us to the beach. This was unlike any beach I can remember walking on, not because I was accidentally mooned by the group we apparently did not give a sufficient head start to, but because the sand was squeaky. Every step we took – Ian and I in shoes, Zach and Wes barefoot – our feet made the kind of squeak you hear when basketball players slide ever so slightly on a well-polished court. Whatever caused this strange phenomenon ended before we reached the caves, which was probably for the best. It would have distracted us from the fun.

The first thing we realized in the first cave we entered was that, stupidly, we had brought absolutely no torches (“flashlight” = “torch”), even though all four of us own a perfectly good headlamp. In true democratic spirit, Wes, Ian, and I unite in blaming Zach, who, as the driver, was the only one not groggy from sleep when we reached the carpark, and therefore the one who should have been thinking clearly enough to realize that we need lights in a cave. The second thing we realize is that the lump in the passageway between this cave and the adjacent one is a seal. Or a sea lion. The narrowish passageway is definitely within the edge of the safe perimeter. We'll have to go back outside and around to the other cave. Inside that one, back in sight of the seal, we start to notice our lack of light. Zach and I are inching our way into a small side path when the seal BARKS! and starts lunging at some tourists back in the first cave.

Glad it's not us.

The seal quickly slows down and the people slowly retreat. Zach and I take a brief look into the side path once more when Ian shouts “It's coming back!” I do a mock scream and start walking back to a safe distance from the seal's original position. The seal is now hopping toward that position – which is the same as hopping toward us – and I see Ian bolt past me, Zach hot on his heels. I find this pretty funny. The seal settles back down for sleep and I tell the runners that they had probably done nothing other than make the seal more likely to charge us. We briefly debate whether it's likely that seals can outrun humans. When we get to a point where the rock wall is far enough out into the beach that the waves are reaching it, we are unsure whether to continue. Are there caves around the corner? A guy returning from that direction assures us that there are.

Ian and I pick our way through the tide and over the rocks more carefully than Zach and Wes, since we don't want to get our shoes wet. We safely reach the other side and, after a little more walking than I expected, found the next cave. We ventured bravely in. This cave was quite dark, and my meager iPhone light – the strongest light we had – did next to nothing to light the walls. I eventually stopped (I was the leader of the group), too cowardly to go forward without more light. Zach goaded me on, and I told him I would do it only if I could use him as a human shield. He didn't agree, but I liked the idea enough to try it out. I hid behind him, holding my phone out over his right shoulder and my head over his left. We made very slow progress since I was essentially pushing him forward, but there was a lot of laughter and a lot of confusion from Ian and Wes, who could not see far enough forward to tell what we were doing. We gave up and turned around.

At the mouth of the cave, we ran into a brilliant fellow (he brought a headlamp!), who asked us whether this one went back very far. We told him we really didn't know, but that he would probably have more success given that he'd thought to bring a light. He told us the next cave over was pretty narrow and that he'd turned around when he saw a pair of eyes looking back at him.

Great.

And so, of course, we headed off to that very cave, with far less light than our informant. I again reached a point where I did not want to go further, though this time not because of general darkness.

“There's an indeterminate thing in front of us”, I informed the group when they caught up. We decided to take a picture with Ian's camera, knowing that the flash would give us a lot of light. Hopefully we could make out the path ahead by looking at the picture on his small screen. FLASH! It was an... indeterminate thing. 

A few more of the same, one with me pointlessly doing the human shield thing with Ian (who was in front anyway), and no good. We were too far away. I decided to brave the darkness and walk closer to take the next picture myself. And so I walked slowly toward the spot where I knew something white was sitting.

“Take the picture already!” Ian shouted in suspense. FLASH!

“Guys, it's... gone”.

“No f'n way!” We hadn't really thought we were getting close to something live. But I showed them the picture Ian had just taken: thing. I showed them the picture I took: nothing. Immediately we began to waddle down the tiny corridor in hilariously befuddled panic. Part fear, part confusion, part silliness, the causes of the ensuing laughter were myriad and powerful. I was laughing harder than I have in a very long time by the time we reached the brightly-lit entrance to the cave.

After calming down, we decided to go back for a second try. Zach wasn't convinced there had ever really been anything there, but this time I could see it from the time we started. I kept my eyes focused on it all the way until we reentered the darkness. Ian tried a few more shots, but failed to capture it on any of them. I got one picture and handed the camera back to Ian as we inched ever closer. I was staring hard at the patch of white when I saw it twist. It appeared to be fur and there were definitely eyes. We had in fact been looking at a live creature, though we didn't know what. Satisfied, we turned around. Later, viewing these pictures on a computer would inform us that we had run away in blind terror from a cute baby penguin. The only penguin, in fact, that we have seen on this whole trip. And we've been looking.

We didn't go to many caves after that. At least, nothing about them stood out. The last one we went to was behind a pool of water about 15 cm deep. This was more than Ian and I wanted to wade in our shoes, so I made a traversal across the rock wall to the other side. Ian didn't want to do that either, so he sat out our last visit. This was just as well, since none of the caves (there turned out to be three) were very large, but were dark enough that we didn't enter any of them.

Our last stop on the Catlins tour was a very pretty waterfall. It was a wide one, and fell down in several steps. A pretty serious photographer was taking pictures of it the whole time we were there, so we tried to keep out of the center when we went off the path to see it closer.

 We were pretty serious too

Dinner tonight was mutton chops and cous cous at a holiday park on Lake Waihola (we didn't quite make it to Dunedin). We eat out on a point of land in the lake, with a floating dock a little way out. I'm reminded of my childhood in New Tribes. When Zach and Ian are too full to finish their cous cous, I remind myself of my dad by finishing it for them.

Tomorrow we explore Dunedin.

Terra Bella

February 7

Wow. Just... wow. I suppose that for consistency's sake I should tell you that we woke up this morning at 9:00, that it rained last night so Zach and Wes got in the tent, that we had oatmeal and raisins but that we were out of brown sugar so we used jelly instead (except for me – I just had the raisins). But really the only story from today is the mountains, the fjord, and the most outrageously beautiful drive I have been on in my life.

Te Anau -> Milford Sound

I was a little unhappy this morning. I can't say for sure why. Maybe it was the discovery that I had left my jeans – the ones I got for Christmas, the only long pants I had with me on the road trip – in our hostel in Queenstown. Maybe it was because my new NZ cell phone no longer seemed to work. Maybe I was just a little cranky from being on the road so long. Whatever the reason, I was – in the middle of summer on the south island of New Zealand, for crying out loud – feeling a little curdled. And so it was that the first stop we made this morning at Mirror Lakes didn't strike me as all that great. Yeah, they were kind of reflective, but what water isn't? They certainly weren't mirrors. Well... well they did reflect the plants at the edge of the lake surprisingly well. And that upside- down sign that you can only read in its reflection is kind of cute. But I just want to get back on the road so I can sit and type.

I finished said typing and had just entered the "poweroff" command (I love Linux) when we pulled into the next scenic lookout. "Oh," I thought, "I guess I could go out." And I did. We all stood at the edge looking out. Yeah, it was a big mountain. But we'd seen bigger ones yesterday. And more of them. And in a more wide open area.

Whatever.

I was actually faintly irritated with how big a deal the others were making with the sight. "And it's supposed to just keep getting better!" "Someone called this the best drive in the world!". Oh boy. I don't know if I'm going to be up for this.

Faint irritation.

I really want to impress upon you how much I was not in the mood to give praise lightly. I want you to understand that I didn't see how this could be such a special drive, and that when we very first started, I was quite convinced it wasn't. I want you to see how very much I was wrong.

We were back in the car, Zach driving, I looking glassy-eyed out the window, when a waterfall flashed by. It was... it was pretty cool, actually. I, uh... I wish I could have gotten a picture of that. I look to the front of the car and see that we are passing one of those gorgeous rivers that New Zealand has strewn casually about itself, as if they're no big deal. I... you know it wouldn't be so bad if we stopped here. Sure enough, Zach is pulling over.

Nice.

We get out of the car and before I realize it, Ian is blazing a trail through the grass and a few trees to get to the river. I quickly follow. Starting to warm up to the scenery again, I am struck by just how much I like these rivers. This one is different from the ones we've been in before; the rocks are huge (person-sized or bigger) and very smooth. 

There aren't enough of them to move freely around the river, which is pretty wide anyway. I start hopping downstream, looking for a path across to the middle, if not the other side. I jump to a smaller rock (maybe half person-sized), land on the side of my foot, feel it slide down to let my weight off it, and SPLASH! into the water, about to my knees. In Ian's pants.

Drat.

I'm a little ahead of the rest of the crew, so without saying a word I walk back to the car, change into a pair of my own shorts, and make my way over to the waterfall. It is, in fact, very pretty. I snap a few pictures and then stare at it for a few minutes. 

A bus pulls onto the one-lane bridge I am standing by, missing my back by half a meter or less. After it pulls away (all the buses stop there for a few seconds for the passengers to take in the view), I decide it's probably time to move. As I walk back toward the part of the river I fell into, the group is heading back to the car. I wished I could have stayed to explore it more, despite my faltering start, but I enjoyed what I got to see.

Feeling a little more lively, though still not chipper, I started looking out the window with a little more interest. Mostly I was hoping to see more water. But it was not to be. What did start appearing were more of those weary mountains. Actually, these mountains were a little bigger than I realized. Quite large, actually. And... wow, they just don't stop, do they? My opinion of the drive is slowly but surely starting to sway in a positive direction when I notice an especially picturesque view framed in my passenger window. There is a tall, gray mountain, capped with a large band of white snow melting quickly enough to drive a moderately powerful waterfall down the craggy sides of the rock. The peak is bordered on either side by greener brothers, below by a long rock slide, and above by a deep blue sky punctuated with wispy white clouds. I snapped the picture – and another one or two, as we drew closer – and was excited to notice we were pulling off the road toward this very mountain (though a little disappointed that this “hidden” view was not going to remain my unique discovery).

There was a trail from where we pulled off leading up toward the mountain. It didn't take us long after reaching the end of the trail to decide to continue further in the direction of the peak, and we made our way down the rocks to a patch of flat ground below us. The area was strewn with some monumentally large boulders. I was tempted to climb one, but the excited pace of the group toward the mountain left me no time to. We paused only a few times to consider turning around – at an unusually loose area of rocks or when our destination seemed particularly far away. But we continued to climb. We reached an area of very packed ice that looked like snow, which was probably quite like what we saw far above us on the peak. We saw two fellow explorers there, on there way down, who teased us for having sandals (I was actually in flip-flops) on this rocky hike. We stopped when we came in sight of the much larger swath of snow/ice at the base of the mountain. We had a spectacular view of the waterfalls fanning out over the shear face of the rock. From this angle we could not see the frozen source of the water, but we were impressed by how much of it there must be to fuel this wonderful display. Turning around, we found our car in the distant carpark to be no wider than a pinky finger held at arms length. We had hiked a moderate distance. Needing to make the cruise ship by 3:00, picked our way back down.

Not sure why I took such a poor picture of the snow. There's a bunch more that way -->

The waterfall up close.

One of the specs under that snow is our car. You can probably only see it in the fullscreen picture.

We were completely surrounded by mountains. 

My complete panorama was eaten by my SD card, so you'll just have to extrapolate the rest from here.

We had pulled off the road within meters of the entrance to the tunnel. Ian had told us there would be a (750 m?) tunnel on our drive today, and we were looking forward to it. When the stop light signaled us to go (most tunnels here, along with most bridges, are one lane) we pulled in and were immediately shrouded in darkness. Or, at least, semi-darkness. The tunnel was very poorly lit. A single overhead bulb was placed every 25 m or so and there were reflectors running either side to allow the passing headlamps (headlights) to do the work of marking the the limits of the tunnel. The walls were untouched rock except for a strip of white on the bottom 50 cm and the odd 15-m-wide strip of metal that would line the walls of a corresponding 15 m length of tunnel. These were so dented they appeared to be made of nothing thicker than a tin can and offer absolutely no structural support. The only thing they seemed to be good for was to make a bizarre circle of flickering red light (out of the retreating taillights (taillamps?) of the cars in front of us) for us to drive through, as if it were either a very cheap form of decoration or the jarringly unnatural course markers for a driving video game. Either way, what grabbed our attention most was the fact that this tunnel was just so steep. We only half-jokingly wondered whether our rental car would be able to make it back up after the cruise.

I was enjoying the strange lighting and the strongly cave-like feel of the tunnel when, suddenly, we reached the end. I say the end was sudden for a few reasons. First, we were (or at least it seemed we were from the back seat) abruptly bombarded with sunlight. Second, we were headed straight into an oncoming bus (a parked bus, waiting its turn to use the tunnel. This effect happens a lot on the one lane bridges as well). Third, our tiny cave opened up into a staggeringly vast valley between staggeringly huge mountains. The scenery was captivating. Every bend in the road revealed another stunning peak. The number and size of them and the way they slid past each other as we drove made me think it was like we were driving through the rolling hills on the north island, except that each one was rocketed up 1000 m in the air. It was delightful to think that the view of these supremely majestic mountains could – and was being – improved! by the simple act of driving through them and watching them gracefully move through each other. I wished I could capture it all on film. But, perhaps metaphorically, my camera's memory card was filled after only two seconds of the video I tried to capture, leaving me with no way to record everything I was taking in other than mentally. I actually, for the first time in my life, wished there were fewer trees so that I could have a more uninterrupted view of the landscape. Every turn that took us into a section of tall, close trees seemed to be a waste of the precious road between us and Milford Sound.

The thing to take in here is the ridiculo-hugeness of everything.

Milford Sound

And, eventually, that road did end, leaving us in the carpark at a 10 minutes' walk from our cruise. We dug through our car and rooted out our bread and tuna cans so we could make a quick lunch before boarding the boat. Since I had been shopping for my rain jacket while the everyone else was buying groceries, including this tuna, I was given my choice of flavors. I picked lemon pepper and was quite pleased with the decision. This was my first time eating tuna and I liked it a lot. We didn't have long to eat, though, so we swiped everything we'd used with a paper towel, I hung Ian's pants out of the car window to dry, and we scurried off to the wharf.

As incredible as the drive here had been, the cruise was even more magnificent. On the top deck of the boat there were no trees to interrupt our view of the splendor of the fjord (despite the name Milford Sound, we were cruising through a fjord). We were floating on top of the familiarly gorgeous blue New Zealand water. On all sides were the green, green slopes and vertical walls of the valley we were moving through. We learned that the tallest peak was over 1300 m above us and the lowest depth was more than 330 m below us. As soon as we were out of the harbor, we saw one of the most spectacular waterfalls I've ever seen. I don't remember hearing an official height, but I would guess it to be somewhere north of 60 m, cascading down in beautiful white jets all weaving all over the mountainside.

The captain spent most of the 100-minute cruise pointing out the especially interesting features of the land we were passing. I missed much of what he said at the beginning because I was holding on to the very front of the deck, wind whipping past my ears, but one of the more incredible things I heard when I sat down was that Milford Sound has occasional tree avalanches. It seems that the trees around here share root systems and that this allows them to cling tenaciously to some seemingly impossible cliff faces. But every now and then, the captain said, a particularly old tree, feeling the strain of hundreds of particularly waterlogged trees below it after a particularly heavy rain, will simply be pulled off the rock. And as it falls, it dislodges other trees below it which dislodge other trees below them and soon a whole swath of trees will find themselves plummeting to the water below. Here the captain points out a triangular section (roughly isosceles, small angle at the top) of bare rock amid an otherwise fairly dense section of trees. This is the scar left from a tree avalanche. Looking around, we begin to see several such scars, and continue to do so through the remainder of the trip.

Fascinating.

travalanche scar

Eventually, a turn in the valley reveals the wide open ocean. Here we learn that Milford Sound is all but invisible to ships at sea. It is so close to impossible to see that its discovery was an accident. A man who had sailed the area for 13 years was caught in a storm and blown into the spectacular hidden fjord. He named it Milford Haven, after his birthplace. As we make a wide U-turn, the captain informs us that the front of the boat will be the best place to be and that we should get out our cameras for the view back into the sound.

 Note the spec of a cruise ship in front of us. We turned around before it did...

"Now for the scenic part of the cruise", I joke to Ian.

...and it caught up and passed us!

 Seals!

And, somehow, it did seem even better coming back. Maybe it was just because the captain said something, or maybe it was the sunlight, or perhaps it was just the lack of wind at the front of the boat. We got an up-close view of Milford's second big waterfall on this return journey. Zach, Wes, and I followed the captain's advice to go down a deck to get a little farther forward on the boat (but still outside). Our reward was being drenched by the spray coming off the 100+ meter waterfall. It was pretty, but it was very wet. Though the three of us stuck it out longer than most of the passengers, we too retreated before the boat did. Back on the top deck, I noticed even the slight breeze that, it turns out, was still blowing. I was cold, but stuck it out for the view as much as the drying effect of the sun.

The cruise continued...

At one point the captain said,

"For a different perspective, put your back against the railing, hold onto your hat, and lean backward"

 

An hour and 35 minutes since our boat left, we were back in sight of that first waterfall. My camera has been limping along on nearly empty batteries for a while now, so it takes several presses of the power button to coax it to come on. I want another picture of this spectacle of water, and now there's a helicopter coming in that I want to catch in the shot as well (for scale, I guess. Plus it's a helicopter). There are helicopter tours of a lot of the sights we've seen, which I imagine must be mind-blowing. This particular chopper is approaching the falls faster than my camera is willing to turn on, so I start to let go of my hope to take a picture of it. As the chopper gets close to the waterfall, it quickly starts rising. Then, shockingly, it twists and plummets straight down, the blades now spinning perpendicular to the ground, giving us on the boat a straight-on view of what is usually the top of the craft. Just above the tree line, it pulls out of the dive and zooms off over our boat to the other side of the fjord. Those passengers certainly got their money's worth. Hopefully there was no vomiting.

I felt done after the cruise. We stopped at a "vertical rapids" and a few potential camping sites before the one we finally chose, but I was aesthetically exhausted. The south island, no, all of New Zealand earned its reputation for beauty here today.

Dinner tonight was sausage from "the sausage capital of New Zealand". Ian and I thought Zach and Wes were snobbish for not liking them as much as we did, but everyone thought it was a good meal. Tomorrow we head for Dunedin.