Raindrops And Lambchops

On our trip to Waitomo we saw a great number of very young lambs in the fields. Unfortunately we didn’t really have time to stop for an up close encounter. We also knew from experience that when you approach a fence around a sheep paddock, the sheep inside it wander away nonchalantly. They don’t look scared, just snobby. We even saw a few lambs running and frolicking. It was almost too cute for one of us to bear. I (Nick) was busy driving so it wasn’t me, it was someone else. What we needed was dumber sheep or a smaller paddock. We remembered from the beginning of our trip, that there is a roadside attraction just North of Auckland called Sheep World. It’s easy to find, they keep a small flock of sheep dyed lurid colours out beside the road. One sunny morning (read: afternoon) we jumped into the chariot and set out.

Sheep World offers a barnyard petting zoo experience with all the usual suspects: rabbits, sheep, goats, pigs, etc. It also offers a shearing and sheep dog show. When we got there we were offered bags of food to feed the animals with for a dollar. The bags were full of green lumps. We asked which animals the food was for and the lady said, “everthing but the lambs”. That turned out to be fairly accurate, the only things that wouldn’t eat the green lumps were the rabbits, guinea pigs and the possum. I don’t know what they usually get fed, but apparently it’s better than green lumps.

When we got there they were just beginning the shearing demonstration. It doesn’t look like a lot of fun for the sheep or the shearer. The sheep gets sat on the floor and squeezed between the shearers legs to “relax”. Then, the shearer takes a pair of clippers with a giant razor sharp fork-thing on the end of it and tries to shave only the wool and not all the wrinkles and other parts off the sheep. All while bent double at the waist. Apparently the “world” record for shearing sheep in an eight hour day is around 800 or so. It is possible to make 6 figures a year shearing sheep. That is until it cripples you, or you die from septicemia from wool boils in your legs. Neither Ashley nor I are contemplating a career change just yet.

After they had shorn the sheep it was time for the grand finale, the lamb feeding. All the children were told to sit down on the lowest seat of the bleachers. Then they were given a number of milk bottles (and told not to drink them). Ashley and I couldn’t bring ourselves to deprive small children of the experience so we watched. When all the children were ready, they released the lambs. The lambs were very motivated, and they could see the red nipples on the bottles from quite a distance away. One small child with special needs was given a particularly small black lamb who was only 10 days old. Another child, who must have been singled out for ill behaviour, had to feed the fattest lamb we’ve ever seen. It was dyed bright pink (we were assured it was just food colouring), must have weight over 50lbs, and was totally spherical. Not cute. After the milk was gone the lambs just sort of wandered off. It was at this point that we pounced. It turns out that you don’t actually need a bottle to get the lamb feeding experience. If you stick your finger in a lamb’s mouth it’ll latch on pretty good before it realizes it’s been had. You do have to be careful though, because like goats, there are some very strong teeth in the back of lamb mouths. You’ve been warned.

After pretending to feed the lambs we went and fed the rest of the animals. We started out with the alpacas and adult sheep. The black alpaca was very pushy, but quick to avoid being touched. The white alpaca was very gentle and I (Ashley) enjoyed feeding him until he sneezed bits of the green lumps directly into my face. There was one massive sheep with a black face that we’ve been laughing about ever since. He was so excited to be fed that he was practically hyperventilating, and almost climbed over the fence. His breathing sounded like an asthmatic cow on a stairmaster. We quickly moved on because we thought all the excitement might be detrimental to his health. The pigs were next.

On the fence of the pig pen stood a very clear warning sign that the pigs bite, which I noticed after a pig bit me of course. I was just closing my bag of feed, ready to move on to less bite-y animals when a hungry pig helped me help him. He stood up on his hind legs, with his front trotters on the fence, pointed his snout to the skies, and opened up wide. It was almost as if he was telling me that he couldn’t help biting me, but he certainly didn’t want to miss out on the green lumps. I obligingly dropped lumps one by one into his yawning maw, and felt satisfied that we’d worked together to overcome our differences.

We visited the rest of the animals and finished off our bags of feed in what felt like no time. There was a short nature walk through some native bush, which was simply but greatly interpreted. There were labels at the native trees, an interactive sign that played the bird calls of your choice, and Weta motels. Weta are nocturnal insects, endemic to New Zealand, that look like very large grasshoppers. They are New Zealand’s largest insect, and come in several varieties. On this nature walk, every so often, we’d see a little wood box nailed onto the base of a tree. You could slide the lid aside to view the contents behind a piece of acrylic. Each one we came across had at least one weta sleeping inside there. What a simple and effective way to view native wildlife up close. The environmental educator in me was thrilled!

Tragically, we can only describe these experiences with our words, as we FORGOT THE CAMERA! Someone thought someone else had grabbed it I guess. That little 10 day old lamb that we described earlier? We didn’t get a picture of it falling asleep in my arms. The ingenious pig? No video of us feeding him. Not even a single picture of a single Weta. On the plus side, there is no shortage of farms in NZ, and we firmly decided that Sheep World is worth the price of admission, and we’ll likely go again soon. The next weekend, we decided to visit a (free) farm park right here in Auckland called Ambury Regional Park, where they have daily lamb feedings. This time, I did remember the camera.

It has been winter in New Zealand since June 1. The difference between NZ winter and NZ summer is that the days are shorter and, there is a lot of mud. I still haven’t seen a morning frost. I think by the time Spring rolls around we’ll be at around 6-10 days with a morning low temperature of less than 8 degrees Celsius. Bearing that in mind, we can hardly say we’ve been crushed in winter’s cruel grasp, but for whatever reason we have been hunkering down a bit. I guess we moved which put a little bit of uncertainty into our situation, but maybe it’s instinctual. When It gets dark at 5:00pm, you batten down the hatches.

Now though, we are steadily pulling our selves out of the mire of winter. To celebrate, last weekend Ashley and I drove down to the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. Waitomo is a Maori word, wai = water and tomo = hole. Actually a tomo is more like a cenote or a deep vertical cave. The entire Waitomo regional forest is like Swiss cheese with a river running through it and for a nominal fee you can take a tour down the river through the caves on an inner tube.

The main attraction, as you may have guessed from the name, are the glow worms.

The glow worms look like this:

Actually, not really. The “glow worms” do glow, but they aren’t even real worms. They are the carnivorous larval stage of a fly, the Australasian Fungus Gnat. Glow worms are, in other words, maggots. The light is generated through a chemical reaction between the maggot’s waste products and an enzyme. So they are maggots with shining poop. Apparently, the old name for the caves was “The Waitomo Shiny-poop-maggot Caves” but only Australians wanted to visit them. After a name change and some clever marketing they are a popular destination for a wide range of tourists.

It would be nice to picture a bucolic float down a gentle stream gazing up at a thousand shimmering lights (poops) wearing a swim suit and lounging on an inner tube, but a trifle more preparation is required. The stream running through the cave is a balmy 10-12 degrees Celsius and the underground portion of the tour is about an hour. We were kitted out in two-piece wetsuits, given rubber boots to wear and helmets with lights of varying dimness. Ashley’s helmet light was fiendishly hard to turn off, but I guess that’s better than the alternative.

There were 12 people on our tour, one stagette party, one birthday party, a french woman, and us. The stagette and the birthday group were all kiwi’s so this is proof that this attraction is not only for tourists. The first thing we did after suiting up was pile into a (smelly) van for the drive to the river. Once we arrived at the river we piled out and were instructed to select an inner tube that would fit over our bums. The guides freely dispensed assistance gauging our bum sizes. Once we had selected a tube we were instructed to jump backwards off a platform 4 feet or so above a slowly oozing chocolate brown water course. This was to prepare us for similar backwards jumps off of water falls inside the cave. We were instructed to jump out, not up, so as to not smash our heads on the roof of the imaginary cave and to jump so that we landed on our bums, centred on the inner tubes. In order to assist us with landing on our bums, a guide crouched down at the edge of the platform and flicked our heels up as we jumped off. A couple of people landed more on their heads than their bums but Ashley’s and my own form was impeccable. After this we pilled back into the van with our inner tubes to be taken to the cave mouth.

The cave mouth did not appear very large. From the outside it looked not unlike all twelve of us, plus guides, were going to attempt to flush ourselves down a toilet. It got bigger. Immediately inside the entrance was a domed room about 15 feet in diameter and 7 or 8 feet tall. We waited there for a few minutes for our eyes to adjust and to take a picture. They couldn’t use the flash because of all the mist in the air so we had to sit very still while they took a long exposure shot. Some people in the picture are all blurry, but Ashley’s and my own sitting-very-still form was impeccable. After this we began our journey in earnest. I began by immediately smashing my head on the roof. And then doing it again 5 seconds later. That’s why they make you wear a helmet. After bending low enough to exit the room we shuffled down a narrow corridor until we encountered some rushing water. Not quite enough water for floating on, just enough to hose out our boots with freezing cold water. A few twists and turns later we encountered the river proper and got into our tubes. Immediately after setting sail we were informed that we would be experiencing the cave limbo. Because of the noise of rushing water, I heard limo, as in, limousine. Finally, I though, I can get out of this wet-suit and into a dry martini. Sadly, it was not to be.

The cave limBo was a place were the ceiling came down to within 6 or 8 inches of the surface of the water. I however, through a misunderstanding at the sizing station, was sat atop a massive inner tube. Having to force a huge amount of air underwater in order to fit under the ceiling, was far too awkward for me to worry about getting stuck there under millions of tonnes of cold hard rock. There was probably 2 or 3 feet of water under me, but I couldn’t get access to that space, perched as I was, like a  cherry on a rubbery sundae. I made do by grinding my helmet and the side of my face against the ceiling. After the limbo, the cave opened up a bit and there was a pleasant feeling of space. Once we were all floating on the water we joined up into a long chain and turned off our lights. In the dark we could look up and see all the little glow worms. They really are quite beautiful. In the dark. From a distance. Once we emerged blinking into the light and got back into the ever more smelly van, Ashley and I both agreed that the cave tour was one of the most entertaining things we’ve done in New Zealand.

On the drive down to Waitomo we kept seeing very small calves and lambs standing on quivering legs in fields beside the road. In effect we were witnessing the very beginning of spring lamb. It was only a matter of time before we witnessed the miracle of birth. As it happened, the first lady of the fields we encountered in labour was a cow. Let me tell you, a cow being born is spectacular. At first there is a sense of tension. Is the cow okay? Is that the correct part of the calf sticking out of the back of the cow? We didn’t know. They never covered these things in school. But things move fairly quickly and soon you are witnessing the very instant of birth. I do mean instant. The cow leaps to her feet, does a couple of quick footed spins, and a baby cow gets to ride the oldest and most disgusting waterslide on earth. It must be a hell of a shock to the calf, it was probably only 10 degrees or so at the time and it went from being in a warm, if somewhat cramped apartment to lying in a muddy, windy field. I’m not sure what would be worse, to have that happen during the day so you have the shock of bright light, or to happen at night when it’s 10 degrees colder. Only the cows know, and they’re not telling.

Apologies for not updating the blog in quite some time! It’s not that we haven’t been doing anything fun, it’s just that we’ve been busy and neglecting the ol’ blog.

June 1st marked the first day of winter here in New Zealand, and while it has gotten chillier and there have been rainy days, I must say that winter here is preferable to winter in Vancouver! For example, yesterday we took a drive to One Tree Hill around sunset. It’s early July, so seasonally equivalent to early January in the northern hemisphere. At the park we saw several people taking in the sunshine in t-shirts and shorts, as well as at least one child in bare feet (climbing a fence).

In our front garden, we even have Monarch Butterfly caterpillars and one cocoon!  They’re not fussed by a little bit of cold weather. I took the following pictures a couple weeks ago, so they are much bigger now, but I couldn’t resist sharing these adorable teeny tiny caterpillars with you. Nick’s fingers are in most of the shots for scale. Have you ever seen such tiny caterpillars?

We will update more again soon! We’ve been trying to get out to some of Auckland’s regional parks on the weekends to absorb the amazing scenery, so we have a lot more pictures to share.

I love photographing animals because they are so uninhibited, and I like the challenge of trying to capture their movement. My absolute favourite moments happen when I get to photograph their faces looking right at my lens. It results in the most comical human-like expressions. Fish are challenging because they move quickly, and are afraid of the giant predator’s eye that the lens resembles. Last month, Nick and I went to Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World, where I had a lot of fun with the camera! They didn’t all turn out as I would have liked, but the lighting is certainly a challenge – especially in the shark tank!

Last weekend, we took a “mini break” and headed south-east of Auckland to the town of Rotorua. We had been through Rotorua back in January, but were only passing through on our travels. We decided then that we had to come back once one or both of us were working (in this case, just one) so that we could afford to do a couple of the touristy things there. The town in unashamedly touristy with any activity you could imagine from jet boat tours on the lake, or helicopter tours ($100 per person for 8 minutes!!), to spa treatments, and curio shops.

The town is in an active volcano area, which results in an abundance of geothermal energy, and the smell of farts. The whole town smells like somebody cut the cheese – big time. You sort of get used to it though. Sort of. Until a gust of wind comes through and accosts you with a new wave of sulphur tainted air. Anyway, because of all of the geothermal activity going on, the groundwater gets very hot there. It is not uncommon to see billows of steam seeping up through the ground at the local park. They seem to have the hot spots figured out though, so don’t worry, there are fences to keep all the children and dim-wits out, for the most part. It didn’t seem to stop a clever individual from jumping the wall for a photo op on the edge of a steaming pond when we were there in January. He got reamed out by a local dad pretty good. Apparently a couple weeks before, somebody died in one of those pools!

As you can probably imagine, the people of this area have capitalized on the hot ground water. Even before there were any European Settlers, the Maori people used the hot pools for cooking, bathing, medicinal healing, etc. Over the years, there have been many deaths. When early Europeans came to the area and started to build ‘health spas’ to allow people to take advantage of the hot springs, it was largely trial and error. The Rotorua Museum is housed in the town’s old bath house, where they’ve restored some of the rooms to their original appearance. We didn’t go in, but according to the guide book, some of the spa implements more closely resemble torture devices than relaxation aids. We took advantage of the modern spa in town.

The Polynesian Spa has dozens of pools fed by the hot springs, in varying temperatures. You can go to the family pools, rent a private pool, go to the ‘Lake Pool’, or you can go to the adult only pools, which we ultimately chose. The experience was better than we could have hoped for! The area had seven pools ranging in temperature from 38 to 42 degrees Celsius! Some of the pools were supposed to have beneficial minerals as well, but they weren’t labelled, so I can’t say if we benefitted or not. We did sample each of the pools, and they were all very relaxing and wonderful. The best part about it was that it was raining quite heavily, and the pools are outside! If we got too hot, we simply sat up and exposed our shoulders to the rain. I can’t imagine what it would be like in the summer time, as the sun is intense. No wonder so many people have died throughout the town’s history – they got cooked from both ends!

The next day we started by having breakfast out, which is quite an extravagance here, unlike at home. Much to our dismay, we have yet to find the ‘greasy diner’ equivalent here in NZ. Most breakfast places are more like a bistro cafe, and none even serve simple drip coffee. Coffee is taken very seriously here, and the only coffee machines are pressure brew. So when you go out for breakfast, if you’re having coffee (which of course we were) you’re spending $4 a cup right there! Another difference is the breakfast meats. While the sausage here is superior to any we’ve tasted at home, the bacon is a woeful substitute. It’s mostly shoulder bacon, which doesn’t get that crispy, smokey, deliciousness that we’re used to, and the shape is all wrong. The choices are limited as well. There are no ‘breakfast specials’ where you get eggs any style, choice of meat, choice of toast, hash browns included, and often a glass of juice thrown in, all for about $8. Here, the choices are made for you, and they often include things like grilled tomato or mushroom, not something I would ordinarily eat at breakfast. One thing that Nick really struggles with is the absence of Ketchup. Firstly, they don’t call it Ketchup here, it’s called tomato sauce, which we can’t even say right because they pronounce it to-mah-to and we say to-may-to. Secondly, it’s not on the table as you’d expect, so you have to idiotically ask for it and they bring you a little pot and look at you derisively as they set it down. And lastly, the prices are astronomical. You want a simple eggs and toast, with literally nothing else? Easy, that’ll be $11 please. Or how about ‘bacon’, eggs, toast, and a grilled to-mah-to that you won’t even eat? $16! Don’t forget the fancier than necessary coffees! Anyway, $40 later, we were at least full.

Our next adventure was the ZORB! Well, we were still pretty full from breakfast, so we took a walk through an almost creepy craft fair, and neighbouring park first. The Zorb is something that I heard of a few years ago, and have wanted to do ever since. They have these giant inflated balls, about 2 meters in diameter, with a big cavity in the middle, about 1.5 meters in diameter.  The inner cavity is accessed via a surprisingly narrow tunnel with a zippered flap. The overall effect is somewhat like a womb, complete with birth canal. They put some water into the cavity, and since it was a bit of a cooler day, they used warm water, which was quite nice. To get inside the big ball, you take a running leap, head first, into the canal, and if you don’t get stuck, you do a face plant into the waiting water. If you do get stuck, the guy pushes you the rest of the way. Did I mention that this part all takes place at the top of a big hill? The flap gets secured so there won’t be any premature emergence, and when you’re given the signal, you push from the inside to get the ball rolling! What happens is kind of like a waterslide, because the inside of the cavity is slick from all the water, and you end up sliding and turning on the bottom, while the ball rolls and bounces down the hill. It’s incredibly fun! At the end, another guy opens your zip, and you slip through the canal in a breech position, along with all the ‘fluid’. It’s so similar to what I imagine being born is like that they could use it in new-age therapies. Nick and I had two rides. The first we did together down the straight path, and the second, we did separately down the zig-zag path. I had a blast both times, but Nick made himself a bit queasy because he was trying to get fancy in the solo run, and ended up doing a few more bumps, flips and turns. Now you can understand why we waited a bit after breakfast before doing this! Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures because we weren’t allowed to bring our camera with us, and while they did photograph it, nobody was working at the photo desk, so we couldn’t see our pictures to buy them even if we wanted to! Oh well. If you want to visualize it, have a look at the Zorb website.

After the Zorb, we headed back to Auckland, an uneventful 3 hour drive. It was very nice to get away for that little jaunt after being in Auckland trying not to spend any money for the past month! We are starting to brainstorm plans for our next mini break, which will probably be Easter weekend. If you have any suggestions of things we should try, tell us and we may be brave enough to do it!

For our first 2 weeks in Auckland we pitched our tent at the North Shore Motels and Holiday Park. The Holiday Park is pretty typical for New Zealand. There’s a mix of grass areas for tents and pads for RVs, they have a TV room, coin operated internet terminals, a communal kitchen, Laundromat and gender specific shower blocks. Ashley and I were provided all these fabulous facilities for the low price of $40 per night or the discounted rate of $250 per week. For just $1000 per month we had the privilege of living in our 35 sq. ft. nylon house. It may sound ludicrous to pay that for a tent site, but the campground was never empty so we weren’t the only people willing to pay it.

Initially the Park seemed quite good. It’s centrally located on Auckland’s North Shore in the Northcote neighbourhood, adjacent to trendy seaside Takapuna. It’s a 2 minute drive to a library with free wireless internet and a grocery store. Unfortunately after you’ve spent 3 or 4 days there, the shine comes off the apple.

First off, the library. They run a daily morning sing-along for infants and parents. Ashley and I both particularly enjoyed the song about the octopus and penguins sung to the tune of Frere Jaques that we heard on our first Monday there. Unfortunately that talented woman set the bar unreasonably high for the groups later in the week. Thursdays they have a kind of freestyle percussion and song session. It’s lead by a woman with a voice like a fire truck siren and accompanied by 15 or so tots shaking rattles so hard, their chubby little arms are a blur. At least the little babies weren’t on the internet hogging the bandwidth. At 3pm, on the dot, an afterschool program for 9-12 year olds would start. It appeared to involve having the kids play “educational” games on the internet for 2 hours. Needless to say, the already painfully slow net work would roll over and die as soon as the little tykes got online.

Sadly, the worst thing about the library is its proximity to a social housing development. Every mother of facebook age within walking distance would wander in and spend the time from 11am until 3pm on various social networking sites while their bored toddlers had meltdowns. One peach of a woman went out for a smoke leaving her 2 year old screaming in the middle of the floor. A librarian picked up the child and delivered him to the mother at which point she innocently asked “oh, is he crying?” It got pretty depressing. The cherry on top was that after we had been suffering through this for a couple of weeks we found two other libraries just 5 minutes down the road in either direction. Both were much more pleasant and one had commanding 210 degree views of the harbour and city.

When the internet was functioning we spent our days looking for work or some place to live. Ideally we wanted to find work before we found a place. What landlord worth their salt would let two un-employed people, whose previous house ran on unleaded, move into his building? Basically, anyone who would take us, we wouldn’t want as a landlord. It was also very competitive. We saw a lot of ads for places that stated that there would be one showing and then a tenant would be chosen that day. The Holiday Park had several families staying in it who had come from the earthquake in Christchurch. I felt bad at the notion that, if successful, we would be potentially beating out people who had lost their homes in the earthquake.

In the end we found a place to live in the most unlikely spot imaginable: the sale rack at a menswear store. We were shopping because I had gotten a job interview. Actually this was my third interview but the first one had not resulted in a job and the second could best be summed up by the phrase “crash and burn”. Anyway, we felt that I needed a little something extra so we were shopping for a dress shirt for me. Roger, our soon to be landlord, who was working in the store at the time, looked at my casual pants and suggested some nice slacks. I agreed wholeheartedly that my pants weren’t ideal interview wear, but admitted I couldn’t really afford new pants. He understood immediately and showed us some sale shirts that he had put aside to send back to the wholesaler. While I was in the fitting room trying on the likeliest candidates, Ashley and him got to talking about our trip and where we were currently staying. Roger mentioned that he had room in his house and gave us his number. We picked a shirt but remained non-committal on the spare room.

That evening, around 8 o’clock, I called Roger from the tent to ask him a bit more about the house. I had to raise my voice above the din of rain on taut nylon. We agreed to meet the following evening. It rained pretty hard that night. We had taken great pains to locate our tent on the highest part of the site, but the sleeping bags still got wet. The following day we washed and dried them, but even so, by the time we met Roger we’d had it with the tent. Roger shares a 4 bedroom town house with his 12 year old son Connor, and Fletcher the centegenarian cat. The house is just a few minutes from the Holiday Park and it’s got a nice view of the city and Rangitoto, a volcanic island in the harbour. Even better for me, it’s only 10 minutes from my new job. After about 15 minutes we had decided to stay and Roger made us up a bed. A real bed! With a mattress and everything! We left our tent at the Holiday Park that night and went back for it the next day.

We’ve been here for about 2 weeks now and we’re really enjoying living in a permanent building again. We’ve been doing all kinds of crazy-fun house things like sitting on the couch and watching TV, or loading the dishwasher. We even did some yard work! Gumby and Pokey have settled in nicely too. They get up early to make us coffee and bring us the paper. Ben has his own parking spot, and because it’s in the front of the house I gave him a bath so he doesn’t bring down the tone of the neighbourhood too much and he’s really enjoying not being crammed full of damp camping gear.

Ashley and I have stopped traveling for the time being and have been  doing boring things like looking for work and a place to live. Now that those things are settling down there are some things that we didn’t get a chance to write about as they occurred. It’s not that they weren’t note worthy, rather it was more a function of us posting about the most recent thing we did. Most recently, we’ve been going to the library a lot to use the free internet. Before I post about that I suppose I should mention some of the more spectacular things we saw and did.

Before we ever went to New Zealand we had heard about Milford Sound. Most of the people we talked to who had been to NZ had been there and they all said it was worth a look. On the map Milford Sound looks like any other small town except that it’s not on the way to any were else. It’s also not really on the west coast and it’s not as far south as other towns like Invercargill. The other thing you notice about the location of Milford Sound when you look at a map is, that it’s only about 80 kilometers from Queenstown in a straight line but the road does a big 250km loop through the town of Te Anau. We would have to drive close to 500km in a circle just to get to and from this blip on the map. Already Milford Sound had big shoes to fill.

My initial plan was to spend a night in Queenstown, spend the following night in Milford Sound and then drive to Dunedin on the East coast of the island. It would be a surgical, tourist, hit and run. What ever dubious merits Milford Sound could boast we’d get a fair idea what they were and then we get the hell out. The first little wrinkle we encountered is that there isn’t any camping in Milford Sound. So we had to spend the night in a site about 100km from town. The next day we left the campsite at the crack of 10am. After all, if I drove the speed limit, 100km distance would take no more than one hour. Shortly after I performed this mental arithmetic we passed a sign that said “Milford Sound 100km, Allow 2 hours”. I found this troubling.

The first view point that we pulled over at was the “mirror lakes”. These are a set of oxbow lakes formed by a river that are notorious for providing spectacular mirror images of the surrounding mountains. Just as we pulled in a tour bus was leaving and we congratulated ourselves on our fortuitous timing. Our guide book told us that the lakes would be at their calmest in “the early morning”. Apparently 10:30 was early enough as the images in the lakes was pretty darn good. As we were enjoying the lakes a tour bus pulled up disgorging 75 more tourists. We felt that we had had enough of the lakes so we decided to move on. As we pulled out two more busses pulled up and dropped their loads off. It was at about this time that I gave up on my “schedule” and decided to embrace the more relaxed pace that the traffic was dictating.

I’m glad that I did because one of the best things about Milford Sound is the drive to it. Imagine the Rocky Mountains in Banff National Park, combined with the Fraser Canyon and covered in the dense temperate rainforest of the west coast of Vancouver Island. The scenery is THAT amazing. It’s all hosted by New Zealand’s mischievous alpine parrot, the kea. Keas are the size of a raven but they have a can opener for a beak and dexterous feet. They’re a bit like flying monkeys. Armed with knives. Apparently they can be a bit of a nightmare, eating all the soft rubbery bits off of cars. Ben never had a problem but perhaps he’s just not that palatable.

After a while it became obvious that we were driving up a wide U-shaped Valley with naked rock walls on either side of us, and more puzzlingly, in front of us. There appeared to be no way out of the canyon but the road kept on until finally we saw a lineup of cars stopped at a set of lights. Unbeknownst to us Milford sound is accessible by road only because some very industrious Kiwis with a great deal of dynamite had blown a long tunnel in a mountain. The Homer tunnel isn’t as long as some of the tunnels in the European alps buts it makes up for it by being just under 2 cars wide, just about pitch dark, having a lot of water running out of the ceiling, and generally looking very rough and tough. After waiting for 15 minutes the signal released the lineup on our side and we entered the tunnel. The road up to the tunnel climbs steeply but as soon as you drive in, it drops just as sharply. It feels like you are driving directly to hell. At least we weren’t worried about meeting oncoming traffic because of the control lights. If we did feel like spicing up the trip we could have done it at night. They turn off the control signals after dark and the tunnel is open at both ends. What fun!

Much to our relief, after a few minutes we burst out into bright sunshine in another rocky glacial valley. It’s worth mentioning the sunshine again. We had slept in the car the previous night to avoid the rain and we had heard that it had been raining for the week prior in Milford Sound. In fact it usually rains in Milford Sound, so the fact that we had glorious sunshine pretty much made up for the two days of solid soaking we had received the previous week on the west coast.

Once we arrive in Milford Sound I realized the earlier folly of my intended schedule. There are literally no services in Milford Sound. There is no grocery store, so we couldn’t buy ice and there was a sign on the only gas pump in town telling us that there was no gas. The sign was not totally unhelpful though. It said not to worry because “a quarter tank should get you back to the nearest services”. For whatever reason we had a half tank or so, but I have no idea what wild impulse had lead me to fill the car when I did. Later on we heard that the garage behind the gas pump, with a sign proudly proclaiming it to be the home of the Milford Sound Volunteer Fire Department, did not actually house a fire engine.

Once we had established that there was NOTHING else to do in “town” we bought tickets for a cruise up the sound. They were expensive but we didn’t think we’d ever be in the neighbourhood again. We elected to add an optional tour of the Milford Deep Observatory to our cruise.

The Milford Deep Observatory is a really unique facility. Basically it’s a floating barge with a cylindrical observation room hanging 30 feet under the surface, accessed by twin spiral staircases. Mounted to the outside of the Observatory are window box type things that they call gardens. The gardens have had the local undersea fauna seeded on them. It’s sort of a cross between a Submarine, an aquarium and scuba diving. It was a lot of fun and we got to see New Zealand Black Coral (which is actually white when it’s alive) and we didn’t even get our hair wet. The rest of the cruise was fairly spectacular too with huge water falls verdant green mountains and views up massive glacial valleys. All in all we felt the trip was worth the price of admission and we highly recommend it if you’re in the area. Even if it does mess up you’re whole schedule.