Now this has certainly been the most worthy of an early morning get up on this trip. Of course being a night owl and all, the before 7am wake up calls are always killers but if there is a truly magnificent journey to be enjoyed it does make it all worthwhile. Although the journey was indeed a long one (about 4 hours each way in total with stops), I would absolutely have to say that as amazing as all the New Zealand journeys have been, this trip down past Te Anau to Milford Sound for a little 2 hour boat trip has been absolutely jaw droppingly beautiful and the best of any that I have done. We started off heading out of Queenstown along the stunning 84km long Wakitipu Lake which at its deepest is a massive 399m, at its widest is 5km, covers an area of 290km2 & has an average temp of 11.5o celcius - not by any means for the faint hearted amongst us that is for sure.
We passed beautiful mountains & rivers & streams, stunning wild flowers and a mirror lake that wasn't the best mirror I've seen, but then in all fairness the weather was pretty yucky so these lakes really need still weather & gorgeous sunshine like I had in Taupo on the Waikato River to do real justice. Never the less I could still make out the word mirror lake in the little lake that they had put up for the benefit of us tourists.
The most magnificent part of the journey was the mountains that we went through at one point which were covered in a fair amount of snow with a lot of mist. We hopped out in what were pretty freezing cold temperatures while we were waiting for our turn to go through the tunnel to gaze up in wonder & take pictures of this magnificent mountain (I forget to find out exactly which mountain range this was unfortunately - I think probably the Southern Alps or perhaps the Remarkables although I am just not sure). Truly remarkable whicever mountains they were.
Once we got to Milford Sound we had a short wait before hopping on our boat before heading out for our 90 minute tour of this wonderland fjord area and apparently if Wikipedia can be believed New Zealands no 1 tourist destination as well as the world's top travel destination in an international survey. We were not blessed with good weather but then one should expect rubbish weather (it is the wettest inhabited area in New Zealand and one of the wettest in the world) and be grateful if it is anything but. We had rain for about half our journey but in my opinion when you are cruising around this area with sheer rock faces rising as much as 1200 metres or more on either side with so many waterfalls of varying sizes down tumbling the rock face you are in awe irrelevant of the weather.
Feeling absolutely totally and utterly satisfied I hopped back onto our bus for our long but incredibly beautiful journey back to Queenstown deliberating what, if any activities I should partake in the following day.
