aldiskaza.com | nz blog

Road trip adventures continue in part three.

Friday, October 17th

Leaving St. Bathans, we decided that our next stop would be Milford Sound but we couldn’t make the drive in one go (about 9 hours) so we spent the night in Te Anau, a fair-sized town on the Eastern edge of the Fiordlands and about two and a half hours South of Milford. This was by far the best place that we stayed in: we got a flat-screen TV, our own bathroom and kitchenette for $45 each - kick-ass. Not much going on, though we did catch the tail end of the rugby match between Wellington and Southland: we won, though as probably the only Wellingtonians in the bar (called ‘The Moose’ oddly enough) we were definitely in the minority.

Friday, October 18th

Next day we vacated the premises by 10 AM and took off on the incredibly scenic drive up to the Milford Sound. This was some of the most breathtaking scenery I’d ever seen (not quite Grand Canyon, but close) — just raw, untamed nature. It’s seems so hard to find places like this anymore. I’ll let the photographs speak for themselves, but I will mention that New Zealand is home to a pretty unique bird called the Kea. These are alpine-climate parrots (I think the only in the world) that are incredibly curious: they’ll come right up to you, or your car and peck at your shoes or (more notoriously) rip the sideview mirrors off your car. The general consensus is that they like ’shiny things’ and, really, who doesn’t?

After driving through the world’s scariest tunnel - it’s probably only about 800m in length but feels like somebody just blew some dynamite and called it a tunnel - we arrived at Milford Sound and booked our ferry tickets through Cruize Milford. We were quite fortunate with the weather because the previous day we asked around and people were talking about the possibility of snow but we actually got an almost cloudless day — beautiful. The cruise around the sound was something else… the combination of snow-topped peaks and deep, blue water is awesome. There were thousands of waterfalls — some more than 400 or 500 feet — that cascaded down entire mountain sides, finally splashing into the water several hundred feet below. The photos don’t really do the place justice but serve as better examples than what I’ve written here.

After a full-day we buckled down and Julie put the pedal to the metal to get us back to Wanaka for the night — we basically made an eight hour drive in half the time. We grabbed a burger at a place called Red Star and then decided to catch a movie at Wanaka’s tiny, independently owned theatre — Cinema Paradiso. They were screening “The Edge of Heaven,” a Euro film similar to Babel that was pretty good. The most impressive thing, however, was the actual theatre itself: it was basically a giant living room with enormous, comfy chairs and couches. They even had a car body that was full of pillows for those who wanted to get that drive-in experience. You can get dinner served to you during the show or grab something to eat during the ten-minute intermission, a time when they change film reels — a move that Julie and I thought was pretty sly business practice. But the highlight of the night was when a family came in with six dogs, all little terriers. I love this place.

Julie and I decided that if our potential entertainment careers didn’t work out that we would start our own theatre with a similar setup. And dogs would be allowed. Brilliant.

Saturday, October 19th

I spent today on the ground. Julie jumped out of a plane. Enough said. Ridiculous. This was the one thing that she really wanted to do, and I was more than happy to oblige and NOT fall from 15,000 feet. I had already bungy jumped from 43m, I figured it was basically the same thing. Right?

After seeing her grow from a pin-head sized white dot to a full-fledged parachute-flying landing, I was almost willing to do it myself but we had already spent about 4 hours at the airfield. Yeah, that’s a reasonable excuse.

But I still stand by my reasoning: bungy jumping is more difficult and frightening because you have to jump yourself… and you can actually see where you’re going to land. There’s nothing more than some rubber bands to keep you from splattering yourself all over the riverbed below. I think I made the right choice (and I’ve still got $500 NZD in my pocket.)

Our final, rain-soaked days in the next installment - and a glacial letdown.