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SATURDAY, April 11....
I am having to backtrack now. We drove to Milford Sound via the long way. It looks to be about an hour's drive via the way the crow flies, but there aren't any roads that go that direction, so it took us several hours to get there. The beauty of this area is indescribable...they call this place the 8th natural wonder of the world. I believe it. It is raining today, off and on. But the rain makes the mountains here come alive. We are debating whether we have seen more waterfalls today or sheep. :) The glaciers have carved out the fjiordlands and they all are a sheer drop straight down to the water. The mountains here are so high and just as the clouds move by, they reveal a mountain even higher. We have seen literally hundreds of waterfalls. A person eventaully has to pick and choose where to stop off to take a picture or otherwise you would never make it to the actual sound. We boarded the Milford Mariner at 4 p.m. We were welcomed by Captain Dave, a salty old dog(Erin said "the captain sure smells like smoke!". There are about 60 people total aboard. It is raining pretty hard now and we are all in awe of the majestic beauty. Waterfall after waterfall...just springing out of nowhere from these mountains. We cruised around the sound before anchoring in Harrison's cove. Only the brave decided to go kayaking. Yes, that would be Scott and Luke. Erin and I decided a nice game of UNO in the comforts of the dry boat was more of our style. It is so calm in this cove that you wouldn't even know you where on a boat in the water. We had a buffett dinner and then we listened to a great presentation about the Milford Sound. There are mountains here that are three times the size of the Empire State building. There also is a water fall called Stirling Falls that is 3 times the size of Niagara Falls. The next morning after breakfast, they took the boat out on the Tasman Sea. We were rocking and rolling....we saw quite a few albatross. When they pulled back into the sound, they dropped a few of us off at The underwater observatory. What a cool place. It is an underwater observatory that is attached to the rocks with a 10 foot steel arm. Therefore, you can feel that you are floating. You climb 60 steps down to watch all the marine life. Today, because of all the fresh rainfall, there is saltwater below a 15 foot layer of rainwater. This is what makes this a very unique area. We saw lots of fish, the poisonous scorpionfish, some beautiful bright coral and even a small shark. They have a unique coral, the black coral (which actually all white and looks like a snow frosted christmas tree), which can only be seen here. You could spend the whole day here.
We drove back down to Te Anu, had lunch and drove all the way to Dunedin. We drove through green, lush rolling hills...lots and lots of sheep, grazing. I've never seen a place so clean...every farmhouse is well kept. They obviously take a lot of pride in their country. We pulled into Dunedin, a city surrounded by huge hills and water. We won't have any time to explore here as we will take off in the morning to get to Hanmer Springs.
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