The hostel was quite loud until around 11 pm or so. Large gaps under the door and in the wall let in a lot of light the entire night. We packed and loaded up the car.
Sunrise from our room window
The "wall" was clearly an afterthought.
We drove back out toward the airport to the large supermarket and picked up a few supplies for the road. It was then that we realized only the driver's side had a key lock, none of the other doors (not even the front passenger side) did. Inconvenient!
True tramping fruit... not only are these apples smitten but they're loose too!
Are door locks really that expensive?
It was 290 kilometers to Milford Sound so we made sure to be on the road early. We headed down the same lovely highway I had come up on in the bus, stopping to have some breakfast in the car.
Lake Wakatipu
The curvy drive along the lake was much more pleasant in a car than a bus!
We eventually left the lake and turned west, toward Mossburn and Te Anau. Since it was a holiday, there was a giant bike race going on... and they felt zero need to respect the "share the road" signs.
This didn't happen just once but NUMEROUS times.
In this case, the car isn't passing but rather driving along with the cyclists to talk to them for a while... no rush, of course.
A clealry meaningless sign
The race is actually over at this point, but these cyclists still feel they have the right to block the road. There was a recent article about how a car had run a cyclist off the road who was training for one of these events... clearly the cyclist was practicing this arrogant attitude as well.
Sheep in the field
Odd deep scars in the hillside
We stopped briefly in Te Anau for some fuel for the car and some fuel for us... a piece of decadent peppermint chocolate meringue cake.
Lake Te Anau
The Takahe is apparently almost extinct.
Tramping supplies... such as lipstick, heels and perhaps a leather miniskirt??
Mmmmm....
Our route to Milford Sound would take us up along the lake for a while, through forests, past expansive valleys and rivers, into the mountains (over an alpine pass) and then back down to the sound. There were many amazing stops to do along the way. At some point, we kept hearing a loud scraping noise every time we hit a bump that made the car bounce a bit. We pulled over and Regan crawled under the car to check. Apparently a plastic panel had gotten loose under the front bumper (suspiciously in the very place we had whacked going through the river bed), but it was easy enough to pop back into place and it was quiet from then on.... unlike the center console box which had a broken latch and liked to bounce and squeak the entire time, creating its own little interesting tunes.
A lovely view of Lake Te Anau, the largest lake in the South Island (and the second largest in New Zealand)
The shore was not sand but rather hard rocks.
Regan didn't like wearing his hiking shoes while driving... which made him even more fun to tease when we would quickly hop out of the car for these quick stops and he didn't have his convenient sandals to put on. I think this is about as far as he got on this painful rocky trail with his bare feet! Apparently even kiwi feet aren't THAT hardened!
Tourist country
The mountains grew more and more prominent.
A cabbage tree and fall color in the same picture... hmmm... interesting country!
Dense forests...
... to wide open river valleys
There was lots of roadkill... mostly brushtail possums and rabbits. This hawk was upset that we interrupted his meal.
Our first tourist stop was Eglinton Valley. This beautiful area was carved by a giant glacier, that stretched all the way down from above the alpine pass to Lake Te Anau As the glacier retreated, the resulting rivers dumped so much gravel that the valley is much shallower than the original valley the glacier had carved.
Starting in 1859, much of this was farming and cattle drives. They replaced the native tussock grass with English grasses.
An areal map of the valley
Our second stop was Mirror Lakes, which were formed by the Eglinton River. At some point in time, the river shifted and abandoned these deep pools. Black Creek currently feeds and drains them.
Very clever!
There is relatively little wind here so the water is often very still.
Playing with shapes and perceptions
A rainbow trout kept messing up the glassy reflection. Rainbow trout were introduced in the 1880's.
Nice! After all, the tree was here first.
Unfortunately there were lots of sandflies here and they followed us into the car. We began to ascend higher and higher into the mountains, making photos stops when convenient.
'Change down'
Our next official tourist stop was Marian Falls. This was an easy walk over a swinging bridge, through beautiful thick forest, and up to a long cascade falls.
The swinging bridge. As we walked up, a rather ample-sized woman had started across but turned back after a few steps. Probably a good move!
The wonderfully dark, lush forest
Moss, lichen and ferns covered everything!
Covered tree stumps
Moss
Click for a larger version of Regan's interesting panorama of the falls.
On the way back, Regan thinks it would be humorous to get the bridge swinging.
So is this like "Guys and Gals" with a 'trip' being the male version of a 'tramp'?
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