For a portion of our New Zealand tour that we almost skipped (the “deep south”), the southern loop turned out to be one of our favorite parts of the trip! There weren’t a heck of a lot of funny backpacker stories to share, just some incredible scenery, a few more million sandflies, and some looooong days of riding on the Stray bus.
After a couple of days chillin’ in Queenstown (and me starting to get over my cold — thank you, Zicam and Vitamin C!), we joined the Stray group, still with Ricky as our driver, and headed out to Milford Sound. The day turned out to be a stunning, bright sunny day, something that’s rare in a place that gets up to 30 *feet* of rain each year. We made a few stops along the route to check out Mirror Lake, a number of different waterfalls, and the epic mountains that border the road to Milford (you can follow along with our Milford Sound photo album).
Once we were through Homer Tunnel and down to the Sound (which isn’t really a sound at all, but technically a fjord, I guess Captain Cook got it wrong), we hopped on a boat and took a tour of the sound, making our way out to the Tasman Sea. The wind was really ripping in from the sea as we headed out (hence the hilarious photo of Laura’s hair that she almost didn’t let me post)! The views were truly spectacular, and we couldn’t stop taking photos (the album here on the blog is a tiny fraction of the photos we kept, let alone the ones we took and later deleted).
;)
After the tour of the sound, we drove back along the main road and stopped at yet another Stray “exclusive” off the beaten path destination: Gunn’s Camp. Back in the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, when the Homer Tunnel was being constructed (de-constructed?), this is where the workmen lived. Not much has changed there since then, let me tell you. As you can see from the pictures, it’s quite rustic, but what you can’t see in the pictures is the bazillion sandflies that inhabit the place. Dinner outside was a frenetic dance of constant movement, re-application of bug spray, putting on more clothes to cover more skin, and grabbing bites of bug-covered food in between dance moves. It’s funny now, but I was less than amused at the time (just ask Laura). Pretty much everyone was in their cabins and in bed early that night, partly because you really didn’t want to be outside, and partly because we had a 6AM departure the next morning (Laura’s turn to be less than amused) for an express drive down to Invercargill and Stewart Island.