Milford Sound, The Remarkables and Beyond!

First off – Breakfast of Champions:

We got picked up by a different bus this morning which took us through the countryside toward a boat tour of Milford Sound. The bus picked up other people along the way and we saw a rainbow as we pulled in to pick up one person.

We lucked into a very knowledgeable driver and guide, one Marge had met a couple years ago. This guy, Simon, is passionate about what he does and maybe the happiest guy working in NZ and that’s no exaggeration. He loves what he does and he knows a lot about a lot of local flora and fauna and geology and history.

The great thing about the bus rides yesterday and today was that not only did we get commentary from the drivers but we got to get off the bus and look around. Today we got to go on a few short walks, for example, exploring: a temperate rainforest area, a chasm with water-carved rocks, and the area below a glacier. There were other photo ops too where we were able to hop off the bus and wander around briefly admiring the view and taking photos. Mighty fine stuff.

As we got ready to board the bus there was a single flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. Then I got a fine demo of what “hosing down rain” looks like for awhile, so it was a fine thing to sit inside the boat drinking hot tea, enjoying lunch and watching the misty peaks roll by. Of course rain meant that all the many temporary waterfalls started gushing downhill. We saw three seals who were laying around on rocks but otherwise a quiet wildlife day.

All in all a fabulous day filled with many different beautiful sights and gorgeous scenes.

When we were dropped back at Lake Te Anau, we picked up a bit of dinner to go, filled the Prius and started off for our next destination. Folks, it’s a good thing that Marge is driving because I’m so busy looking around and taking photos and trying to figure out what I’m looking at that I’d be really really bad at driving. (Let alone the whole driving on the left side thing, although that’s feeling pretty normal to me right now.)

You can look at the flickr feed to see some photos from today to understand that it’s hard to pick out highlights. You can look up The Remarkables to see why I was having a hard time taking it all in late today!