Glowworms and Milford Sound

May 18
We had a surprise phone call from Megan in the morning - Thanks for the Kiwi welcome!
We had a 3 hour drive ahead of us, stopping now and aging for photos. We arrived in the town of Manapouri and looked into going across to Doubtful Sound. This however is a lot more expensive than the trip to Milford Sound and spending the same amount of time on a boat, so we decided not to go and drove down the road to Te Anau.
The lady in the Information office told us that Te Anau doesn't have any free camping places within 7km of the town so we had to settle for a campsite by the lake. We booked a couple of tours and headed away for dinner.
As we finished dinner and were preparing to have a nice gentle stroll along the Lakeside to get to our trip set off point I looked at the ticket realising that the trip stared at 7pm not 7.30pm, so it was a mad dash in the campervan to the jetty and quick jog onto the boat - in true Franks style "just in time".
The trip was a 25 min boat ride across the lake to get to some caves. These caves went in 7km but we only walked in about 250m, then caught a boat in the dark to look at the Glowworms. Small blue lights all over the ceiling. It was cool, except we weren't allowed to take cameras in so couldn't get any photos to show you - Rubbish!

May 19
A reasonably early start to the day as we had a 120km drive to get to the starting point of our next trip. As we drove out of town along the Milford road we went past loads of free camping places - So not far at all to save a bit of money, think the Info girl was on Commission!
We stopped at Boyd Creek - a small stepped waterfall. It took a while for us to find it as the paths weren't very good and we just followed the sound of water (and I followed James).
Next stop was the Mirror lakes, as the names suggest they have a mirror image of the lakes. Some photo opportunity here, except the walkway was in the wrong place to get the perfect shot - apparently!

Mirror Lakes

The road was quite windy so it was difficult to stop at certain places when the views were magnificent, so you'll just have to take our word for it!
We went through Homer Tunnel (d'oh) which was cut through the mountain and emerged the other side with a series of hairpin turns in the road - awesome!
Our final stop before Milford was the Chasm. A rock chasm that has been formed by the rushing waters of the Cleddau river and a pretty good water fall.
Arriving at Milford Sound and getting onto our boat - The Milford Mariner, we headed out into the river for our 2 1/2 hour journey. It started off well with a bit of sunshine breaking through the clouds, nice views of waterfalls and quite pleasant outside, then went to misty, cold and wet, so the waterproofs were donned.

Millford Sound Waterfall

Milford Sound isn't actually a Sound it is Fjord. This means that it was formed by a Glacier then flooded by the sea, rather than formed by a river (sound). But they still kept the name?!
After the trip we then headed back down the 120km windy mountainous road and added another 180km to Queenstown. We think we were on an amazing road as there were loads of signs for lookouts, except we couldn't see a thing as it was dark, oh well!
We stopped at the first caravan site we came to as we were shattered.

Glowworms and Milford Sound

Te Anau, New Zealand