The Morning After: Te Anau/Milford Sound

The fun thing about New Zealand is that you can basically drive from one coast to another in about 4 hours. If anyone is actually looking at a map of where we've gone you'd see we went from Queenstown, which is basically on the West Coast, to Dunedin on the East Coast, and now back Te Anau on the West Coast...We are excellent at planning trips and conserving gas..but it had to be done.

Milford Sound may very well be the most tourist travelled destination in New Zealand. Filled with crystal blue water, fjords, waterfalls, dolphins and penguins it's easy to see why. Before we took our day trip we stayed in Te Anau, using it as our home base. Te Anau was a small, laid back town with two bars, a few shops and not much else. This meant one thing....time to check e-mail...Invariably it seems this is what ends up happening when we get bored. Typical conversation goes like this:

Kilmer: What's there to do in this one horse town
Doug: Ha! One horse town
Ads: We could check e-mail
Doug: We just checked it like an hour ago
Kilmer: Oh shut up Doug!
Ads: Your mom checks e-mail
Kilmer: Well how bout we check e-mail, drop some hate, take a nap and then be ready for dinner

This is pretty much how our days off went in small towns. The good thing about Te Anau was running into the girls again. We ended up being directly across the hall from them and they helped us out big time at dinner by making us garlic bread and cookies for dessert. If you're going to meet people while travelling make sure they are able to provide food or booze for you...preferably both.

The next day we got up at the ass crack of dawn to be on our bus trip to Milford Sound. Immediately IPOD's went on and we all fell asleep, much to the dismay of everyone around us. I awoke with Kilmer elbowing me telling me to turn down my music because people were staring, and my snoring wasn't helping. Sure enough there was an angry looking old couple giving me the death stare of all stares. Acting tough I said "So, what do I care"...translation "I'm a scared little boy who doesn't want to offend tourists I will never care again".

The drive from there on out was unreal...We got up to 3000m elevation and the ground was covered entirely in snow. The cruis when we finally got there was great as well...I can't really do it justice so I'll let everyone stare at the pictures....

I'm off to check e-mail