After Milford

Hi people,
Looks like we were back from Milford Sound the 25th from last month, so there should be a lot to write about.

After the track, we stayed at the Milford Lodge, directly on the Sound. Next day we took a boat trip through the Sound itself, giving some more impressive views from the steeped walls. There was also an underwater observatory, from which strange deep see animals could be seen.

Looks like because of the massive amounts of water coming from the Sounds waterfalls and river, there is a 5meter thick sweet water on top of the sea water, in the entire Sound. This water layer is several degrees colder than the sea water, and it contains vast amounts of sediments washed out to sea from the rivers. Thus, this unclear layer filters pretty much all the light coming through it, and a similar deep sea biosphere is located at just tenths of meters from the surface. Pretty interesting phenomena!

That same day we headed back to Te Anau by bus, we stayed in the camping for two days more, since Daniela was having some trouble with the throat.

From there we drove to Invercargill, which is the connecting point when going to Stewart Island, once there we decided not to sleep on the car that night, and instead get a room at a cozy Backpackers. And good on us that we did so, the next morning the van showed an inner temperature of 2°C, the windows and roof where all covered with frost.

The Backpackers was really nice, inside an old English style house, were we met a English Guy who was overseas for two years now, and didn't know where/what to do next. Paul was nice and brought us to a wetland scenery north of the town, while theoretically Nissan was fixing our handbrake. As we came back, surprise! we're not in Germany, so three hours later our car was still not serviced. So we moved on to the Catlins, we didn't want to wait more.

In the Catlins supposedly you can see yellow eyed penguins, and that was the reason why we drove there. We did not see any on the beach at dawn, but in Curio bay, after getting up early at 7, we saw 6 of them chatting on the rocks in front of us. They were really sweet, and also loud! Sad not to have one of those fat SLR canyons that looks like nowadays everybody has.

From there we drove up north through completely different looking landscapes. It was early in the morning and the sun was still producing golden light, which gave a romantic view to the half frosted hills. We made a quick stop to see a waterfall but we both were deceived. You get spoiled really easily when traveling for so long, we have seen so many grandiose falls that when we see a 'normal' one, it just doesn't impress anymore.

We drove to the "nuggets point", which gave us really nice views from a light tower into sea, and into several rocks covered with fur seals. On a nearby beach, we waited until 4pm, when supposedly penguins come back to land after the fishing day. In half an hour we saw one, but they are just so funny!

Further north we stopped in to have a look at the famous bolders, geologic formations which look pretty man-made but are 100% natural. Check the pictures in the coming post!

From there we drove even more north until the Otago peninsula in Dunedin, but that will come in the next post, this is already becoming too long.

Cheers!

Jm @ Wellington.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8