[Scott] Today is a big driving day as we are going to try and be at Milford Sound tomorrow. We stopped off and did the quick 30 min. hike to get a decent view of Fox Glacier without hiking to the terminal face. It’s very impressive again, but really quite similar to Franz Josef. We then drove and drove and drove - our longest driving day of the trip. Just like yesterday, there was interesting scenery (and more sand flies) all along the way. The mountain scenery was particularly nice in Mount Aspiring National Park, and then the views from up high over Lake Hawea were quite memorable. The water was so calm and the lighting was just right so that there were perfect mountain reflections on Lake Hawea. We stopped in Wanaka and ate some pizza, and walked around for a bit in this touristy little town situated right on shore of the lake. They have an interesting sidewalk in the town of Wanaka, with a tile for every year A.D., and on each tile it summarizes the events in the world and NZ that year – of course we didn’t have time to cover more than about 1% of the 2000 tiles. I think we spent around 10 hours on the road with all our little stops to take in the sights, and at around 11pm we pulled over at a small picnic area pull-off just past Te Anau on the Milford Road. We plan to get up early (like 5am) so we can get up to Milford Sound and really experience Fiordland right from the early hours and take a cruise through Milford Sound. It is technically a fjord, not a sound, but the name stuck. Here's a trivia question for ya: what is the difference between a sound and a fiord?
<< Home