Segwun at Sea: Our Milford Moment

February 26, 2014

We have reached the halfway point for our Kiwi Adventure. We have only 35 days left to tour the Western half of the South Island and the Eastern Half and Northern Tip of the North Island.

We have been slumming it a little during our last marathon run of hiking and kayaking. Our total hiking time over the past seven days has been a meager 8 hours including a hike up to Marian Lake – an alpine lake “situated in a hanging valley”; a hike along the Kepler Track called Rainbow Reach where it is said some of the scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed; and a couple of insignificant but lovely forest walks.

Hiking up to Lake Marian - one of the moments when the sun was shining.

The breakfast room - still wearing my "pyjamas"
of hat and mitts - but I added another sweater.

The weather has turned a bit cold in the Fjordlands area with nighttime temperatures dropping down to around 3 degrees Celsius bringing a fresh sprinkling of snow on the mountaintops. After a night of sleeping with full-length fleece and thermal underwear, and with me wearing my wool hat and mitts; we woke up, looked at each other and said “hotel time!” What a good decision as the next night ended up being just as cold.

A beautiful view point on the road to Milford Sound

Our real treat this past week has been an overnight cruise on the Milford Mariner. The cruise ship took us out onto world famous and not to be missed Milford Sound where there are spectacular views of the surrounding mountains and fjords; and seals and dolphins to entertain you. The boat makes a quick slip into the Tasman Sea to give everyone a taste of the ocean and to show how Captain Cook managed to miss the fjord charting it as a bay instead. The clouds and rain that had all but ruined our alpine view when we climbed up to Marian Lake the previous day had disappeared and we enjoyed a fantastic evening and morning on the Sound. It was a wonderful experience from start to finish.

Mirror Lake

We have also been to the very touristy town of Queenstown, the old gold mining Western-style, gold rush town of Arrowtown, and the towns of Glen Orchy and Wanaka. Now its time to head North to the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers and maybe do a little more tramping.

The Milford Mariner

One of the many waterfalls in the Milford Sound.

Milford in the early morning.

A look out to the Tasman Sea

Returning into the Sound from the Sea.

Fur seals basking in the sun. We also saw dolphins, but I'm just not fast enough to catch a good photo of them.

And the clouds start to come in.

This waterfall is famous because apparently Hugh Jackman jumped in to the sound from the top during the shooting of a movie. And we were told he was only wearing his birthday suit!