Milford Sound

On the morning of November 20th, Kel, Zack, Kerrie, Mel, Jayne, and I left Queenstown headed for Milford Sound National Park. The three guys piled into my rental car and the three girls rented their own car for a couple of days. It was a beauty of a day for a drive so we stopped plenty of times to take pictures. The scenery was unbelievable. I was in awe for most of the trip and it just kept getting better the we got to Milford Sound. We stopped at one spot called Mirror Lake where the water was so clear you could spot a dime on the lake bottom I’m sure. Once we arrived in Milford we were pretty tired so we all just hung out in the lounge area and had a nice meal. It was one of the pricier places we stayed at around $30 NZ a night (big spenders I know).

Early the next morning we headed out on an hour and a half long cruise through the mountains (so early that we would have missed it if it wasn’t for the girls waking us up an hour before hand with breakfast ready to go). The landscape honestly looked like something out of Jurassic Park. I was almost expecting to see a T-Rex jump out from behind a mountain or something to chomp down on our boat. The ship wasn’t very big and there were maybe 30 people tops on board. We saw penguins, sea lions, and a few birds that I had never seen before. They also served unlimited amounts of free coffee and they gave us a big muffin too which helped start my day off right. The waters became quite rough once we got closer to the ocean and the waves were crashing right over the lower deck and the splash soaked the upper deck completely. We were loving it.

After the cruise we packed up our stuff and started heading out of the park. We stopped for a good 3 hour walk up a mountain right to the summit which was 919 m up. It was a great view or Lake Marian from up top and the walk itself was actually quite enjoyable. After that it was time to get moving though because it was already late afternoon and we had no idea where we were going to stay the night.