I expected it to be quiet at Milford Sound, but it was dead. Stunning place, but we couldn't see any houses, and there was just the one building which is a cafe and information centre during the day and the pub is next door for the evening. We stayed in the only campsite in the area for a couple of nights. We took a boat trip early morning on the Sunday which was a great time of day to go, perfect weather, clear blue sky. We saw the fault lines in the sea that show up as a haze, a rainbow waterfall which Ellie liked very much. We stopped off on the way back to take a look at Milford Deep, a floating underwater observatory which takes you 8 metres down (beats getting cold scuba diving in the water).
In the evening we took a visit to the only pub around and had a few drinks and played pool with the local guides Sam and Brad from the observatory.
One thing I particularly wanted to do at Milford Sound was a kayak trip. We booked onto one, the weather though wasn't the best, really overcast, low cloud, rain. The weather did improve whilst we were out on the water, well it stopped raining at least, the sun came out a few minutes after we got back from our trip (no word of a lie! Typical). Ellie and I were kayaking partners. The partnership didn't start well as we were basically going around in circles. This was more complicated kayaking than in Fiji. I was at the back and I could control the way we moved. Once we got the hang of it there was no stopping us. Really hard work on the upper arms, glad we didn't opt for the full day trip. It was really laid back, going out our own pace. We just had to dodge out of the way of the larger cruise boats as we were like little dots to them. Our group stopped for a tea break in the middle of Milford Sound, all holding onto one anothers kayaks whilst passing around the tea and ginger nuts biscuits.
I was hoping to come across dolphins but no such luck. We did see a couple of penguins, and the day before on the large boat we saw fur seals.
