A glacial facial

Our reasoning for staying in Te Anau was mainly because it was the gateway to the Milford sounds. This was probably the place I had been most looking forward to out of the whole of New Zealand and so was very excited when I woke up this morning. After some porridge we set off in the car on the two hour drive up to Milford. We'd been told that the drive was pretty spectacular and we weren't disappointed. So many mountains were dotted around us making it feel rather magical. We stopped off a couple of times for photos before getting to the mirror lakes and doing a little ten minute walk along beside them, the crazy mountains covered in trees up to the point where snow takes over reflected beautifully in the still water. 

Nearer to Milford we reached a tunnel through the mountains that needed a little work doing to it as the road surface wasn't the best but that just made it a little more exciting. When we came out of the tunnel (it was just over a kilometre long) the view was amazing. Mountains soared above us on all sides. I actually took a little video that I'll try to upload onto here. The road turned this way and that through these mountains for a while until we finally reached the sounds of Milford. Even more mountains were protruding up from the ground here, but right at the waters edge, creating a striking effect. We were rather amazed by it all and after parking up, walked along beside the water to the boat terminal. Last night we booked onto a mini cruise that took you along the sounds out to the Tasman sea but we hadn't received confirmation of it so we wanted to check on this. It turned out all was good and we were booked onto the 3pm boat. This meant we had about four hours to kill but we thought this would be fine as we wanted to do some walks. Turns out there aren't actually many walks around Milford. We were a little disappointed but still set out to do all there was. 

The first walk we did took us to the opposite side of the little village. We could see out to the snowy mountains from here. We sat for a while, admiring the view, before heading back to the car for lunch. The reason for eating in the car was simple, we wanted to avoid the sand flies. They're horrible. The females bite you because supposedly something in our blood helps them to have babies. You can feel them biting and then of course it itches for a few days afterwards. We had bug spray but they swarm around you meaning eating becomes difficult and unpleasant. It's a huge shame because the views were so magical we wanted to sit and eat looking out at them. 

After lunch we walked up to a view point and attempted to walk further but there wasn't really a path and we thought we might be trespassing. Instead we made our way back down and went to see if there was a walk near the boats. That one happened to have been closed off due to it being unsafe. At this point we gave up with the walks, got our stuff from the car and went to sit in the terminal to wait for our boat. By that time we only had about half an hour before we were allowed to check in and then board the boat. It wasn't a huge boat but it could fit a fair few people on it. We were rather excited, like we'd been waiting all day for this. The boat set off and sailed along through the sounds. It was incredibly windy but after eating our free chocolate muffin (Matt was ridiculously excited about this muffin) we braved it and stayed outside, looking out at everything. The skies were blue and the sun was shining (although it was still very cold) and we rather enjoyed the sail out to sea. However, it was on the sail back (the cruise took an hour and a half so not long) that we saw the incredible things. First up was seal rock. Yep, you guessed it, where the seals sleep! Seals are so cute and fat. Next up was a waterfall that the boat went far to close to. The people at the front of the boat got soaked. The boat people called it a glacial facial. I got a little bit of a spray to my face. Finally, we had some dolphins swimming along beside the boat. There were loads of them and they were so close it was incredible! I've never seen dolphins that close before. 

Back on dry land we got back to the car and made the drive to Te Anau. It didn't feel like it took as long this time for some reason but it was just as wonderful. We made it back to Te Anau just before 7pm and instead of going to the homestay again we chose to stay at a hostel by the lake that was cheaper. We'd been in contact with Fernando (remember him from Tokyo?) because he actually lives in Te Anau (but he's originally from Chile). We wanted to meet up with him and maybe go for a drink so we rushed to the supermarket and got a pizza because we thought this would be quick. Turned out the oven at the hostel was shit (we put the oven on the wrong setting). Our pizzas took two hours to cook and even then they weren't done as well as we wanted them to be. This meant we were very late to see Fernando and so he came to see us instead. This was rather lovely and we chatted for a couple of hours until Fernando had to go home as he had work in the morning. We then went to bed feeling we'd had a wonderful day.