Monday, May 25, 2009

Milford Sound

The day is Easter. And what better way to spend Easter than on a bus. The bus ride from Fox Glacier to Queenstown was about 8 hours, though we probably could have made it in 5-6. We stopped every ten feet to look at another waterfall. I mean, waterfalls are great, but they get old after awhile. Nonetheless, we arrived in Queenstown around 4PM and then basically hung out the rest of the night. We stayed at the The Last Resort, which is a converted brothel. There were only 18 beds in the hostel, so it was a nice homely atmosphere.

The next day, we had to wake up early for a 7AM departure to Milford Sound. It is supposedly the "eight wonder of the world." We'll get to that later. Anyways, the bus ride to milford sound took 4.5 hours. We stopped at several places to take photos of waterfalls and "the chasm," which was kinda interesting. However, I forgot to charge my camera after the glacier hike, so it was basically dead. I did, however, get a photo of a rainbow that we saw:


Well, 4.5 hours later, we finally arrived at the Milford Sound Cruise station, where we boarded our boat. We ate lunch, and then headed up to the top deck of the boat. The weather, however, ensured that we didn't stay up there too long. The rain started...and never stopped. Not wanting to get drenched and be freezing the rest of the day, we all headed inside. I'm sure if the weather would have cooperated, Milford Sound would have been a beautiful place. However, we got no such luck, as the rain poured and the fog crept in. According to one of the rest stops we stopped at on the bus ride from Fox Glacier to Queenstown, it rains 252 inches a year at Milford Sound. I did manage to get one photo before my camera officially died:


I did buy our group photo though, which came with some professional photos:


We spent 2 hours on the cruise, and then 4.5 hours on a bus back to Queenstown. Had we known how much time we were spending on a bus, we probably wouldn't have paid that much to go. But, there's nothing we can do about it now. That night, we went to a bar made completely out of ice, even the cups. It was pretty cool. We could only spend 30 minutes in there though, cause it was quite small. Here are some photos of that:


The next day was another long one, but it was an awesome day filled with firsts. More on that coming soon, maybe even later tonight...

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