Milford Sound and More!

Our final major stop was Fiordland, but before we got there, we stopped for a night in a lakeside town that probably had the most beautiful setting of all the towns we visited. Wanaka is a small town situated by a lake surrounded by mountains that flow right down into the lake. The wind was so strong the seagulls were having trouble, but we walked around a bit and then headed into a bar with a view of the lake. After a pint, we got some not-nearly-as-good-as-Tauranga fish and chips and then got some sleep. The next morning, we picked up some meat pies for lunch later that day and then headed to Te Anau, our launching point for our Fiordland trip.

We arrived in Te Anau and ate our meat pies by the lake. I had chosen mutton because we were in New Zealand, and it was OK but very dense (which made it good for taking with us). Emily had chosen the tastier pepper steak. We checked that off of our list of foods to try, leaving only hokey pokey ice cream. We then made reservations for our trip to Milford Sound and checked in to our hotel to find that it also had a trampoline and a place to hang our laundry, just like Turangi. We did some laundry, explored the town, and even tried hokey pokey ice cream, which is basically vanilla ice cream with butterscotch in it. I am not a huge fan of butterscotch, but this was pretty good. It wasn't hazelnut gelato, but not bad nonetheless. That finished our list of foods to try.

The next morning, our tour guide picked us up at our hotel at 8 am. By the time we were on our way, the van had some Brits, some Portuguese, and some more Americans. The two hour ride to the harbor was great for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that I was not driving so I could really enjoy the New Zealand scenery. The second reason was that the tour guide was an expert on the route since he drove it every day to deliver the mail. This meant he could provide us with a lot of information about the area, and he knew all the spots to stop for scenic views. We lucked out with the weather and were able to enjoy a sunny day, which, like the glacier, was not a given. On our drive, we stopped at an amazing meadow, some mirror lakes, and a one-way tunnel in which you actually descend as you progress through it.

A view of Lake Te Anau from one stop on the van ride.

The Mirror Lakes were ripple free.

The sign before the one way tunnel left us enough time to get out and enjoy the mountain views.

Once we reached the harbor, we boarded the boat and took our seats for the two hour cruise around Milford Sound. We learned that Milford Sound wasn't technically a sound because sounds are V-shaped valleys formed by rivers that are then filled by the sea. Milford Sound was actually a fiord, which is a U-shaped valley carved out by glacial activity and filled by the sea. Similar to the Franz Josef Glacier valley, waterfalls were plentiful and tumbled down the cliff sides. Our captain even drove the boat under a few. And unlike Tauranga, we spotted some dolphins. The most amazing aspect of the fiords is their scale. Being atop a mountain can provide a great view, but being at the bottom of a mountain or a cliff really makes you realize how big the land mass is. And we spent two hours at the base of a glacially formed valley.

The Sound / Fiord.

Waterfalls abounded.

That's another glacier atop that mountain in the background. Looks like a patch of snow.

Clouds crowned the mountains.

More waterfalls!

This pic gives you some scale. That's a boat on the bottom left.

The kayaks at the bottom of this picture also provide some sense of scale.

Big waterfall and bigger alps.

As part of our tour package, we were dropped off for a two hour round trip hike up a mountain to Key Summit, which is part of the Routeburn Track. After our experience with Tongariro Alpine Crossing, the hike up to the top was a breeze. The views were of valleys carved out by glaciers. We even caught a glimpse of a cirque while up there. The most important event to occur on Key Summit, and indeed maybe the whole trip to some people, was our engagement.

Emily and I have always arrived at decisions together and getting engaged was no different. After being a couple for six years, we had already decided that we would like to get married, and we thought New Zealand would be a great place to make our intentions official. While there were plenty of places along our trip to make public or grand romantic gestures, atop a volcano or a glacier or maybe deep in a glowworm cave (yeah, that didn't seem like a good idea), we are both private people and wanted to really make the moment our own.

We were in New Zealand, where Emily had always wanted to visit, and we had just spent a day cruising across a fiord, something I had always wanted to see. Though Emily (being the more practical of the two of us) did not want a rock, we did want to have a memento of our first official commitment to each other. In the town of Franz Josef, we had purchased jade pendants, each of which depicts two shoots growing together and represents the bonding of friendship. After our hike to the summit, we found a small setting off the path and gave each other the pendants. As we were talking, two doves flew up out of the bushes, a sign that we were making the right choice and belong together--OK, that didn't really happen because it wasn't a movie. Instead, we sat and talked about our future together, our families meeting, and some of our expectations in life. We then made our way back down the mountain, an engaged couple for the first time.

The view from Key Summit.

Another shot of the vistas.

The cirque was pretty cool.

Our first picture as an engaged couple.

We hung around Te Anau another day, where we finished up some shopping and enjoyed our first day as an engaged couple together. Actually, Emily came down with some flu bug and I had to finish the shopping on my own and buy her some soup for dinner. But hey, that's really what being married really is, right?--looking after each other. A week later, I would catch what she had and she'd take care of me.

We enjoyed our time in Fiordland and spent the next couple days making our way back to the states. We spent an afternoon and night in Queenstown, which is another beautiful lakeside city. We wandered a park there and sat in a cafe along the main strip, where I had a beer and Emily a coffee. The next morning, we dropped off the Nissan Sunny at the airport by parking it and dropping the key in an unattended box. Our flight back to Auckland was easy, but we had selected a hotel near the airport, which meant we were stuck in suburbia for an afternoon. What do you do in suburbia? You walk to a mall, buy some smoothies, and then have some pizza for dinner, which is exactly what we did. Not exactly a crazy finish, but it got briefly exciting the next morning.

We had chosen our hotel (which was currently being improved to a sale-able level as the hotel manager/shuttle driver told us) because it offered a free shuttle to the airport. Unfortunately, the system they used to schedule early morning shuttles (a pen and paper) simply sucked. So, we awoke at 4 am to find that we had no ride. At least there was somebody at the desk to call us a cab, and we got there in plenty of time but we ended up paying for our cab. Don't stay at the . . . I don't remember the name of the hotel, so just avoid staying in Manakau if you can. We slept very little on the flights back, but made it to LAX, were greeted by my sister and niece, took a nap, had some dinner, and headed to San Diego the next morning to move all of our stuff out of a Pod. So, our trip did end kind of crazy--moving in to our new place super tired. And that, folks, was the end of our New Zealand vacation.