The water, it falls.
So you’re just driving along, minding your own business, when whamo, you’re suddenly driving through a long, dark, scary tunnel. Well whose idea was that? Probably the people who didn’t feel like driving over the mountain. So they just bulldozed right through the center. Nice.
Milford sound, is a sound. Actually, it’s the sound. A sound is a fiord. A fiord is an inlet of water from the ocean, that penetrates into land like a mile or something. Sandflies. Cruise. Yeah, it wasn’t that interesting, but I thought I should at least tell you about it.
Once we got out to sea there was a lot of nauseating rocking. Before that, we boated up to a bunch of seals and waterfalls (got drenched by one). It also rained. So, the cliff edges are like steep. As in vertical steep. And then continues on (steeply) down into the water. So boats can get really close to shore.
We stopped off at an underwater observatory (as in, we got off and the boat left…don’t worry. Someone else came to pick us up.) So there was lots of orange sponge, white coral (called black coral) and fish. I couldn’t stare at it for too long because the glass was slightly distorted and it made me nauseous.
Yeah, that’s it. But as to yesterday’s comment of Milford Sound not meeting Lord of the Rings standards. Someone thought that the Argonath (refer to previous entries) was filmed here. But the walls were not that tall. No way.
So we’ve got some catching up to do. Where did we leave off? After Milford Sound we decided (no one’s quite sure why. Just kidding) to go to Steward Island, which is a small island off the southern tip of the South Island. Basically, to get any closer to Antarctica, you’d have to be in the ocean.
Mostly we wandered (at least for the first and last two days). There were a couple short walks (with lots of stairs…yeah), mostly leading to the beaches. Stewart Island is a reserve for birds, so you can’t get to three fourths of the island (there are tours where you were boated out to parts of the island to see kiwis and other birds. Kiwis, just to let you know, are small, brown, flightless birds that are endangered. There is also a tour to Ulva island, which is completely a bird reserve). And I should mention Stewart Island has about 300 residents total.
On the third day we were boated out to a hut, called Freshwater hut. We stayed there for two nights (hoping for a Kiwi sighting, but in vain). We hiked part way to Mason Bay one day and encountered the enchanting bird once again (refer to previous journal entries). The enchanting bird enchanted me once before, although I was able to break away from its spell.
I was more prepared this time. I have learned the small, curious blue bird is in fact a robin and it likes to hang around travelers because they disturb the ground (they then search for bugs and worms). This enchanting bird was much more curious then the previous (did I mention that we also ran into an enchanting bird on the Kepler? We gave it some crackers). It climbed up onto our shoes, pecking at our shoelaces and gators (devices that go over the shoe and pants to keep out rain and mud). Perhaps we were all swayed and slightly enchanted by the bird for a time, but our goal lay ahead of us.
We bounded across the enchanter’s lair (a large break in the path about four feet across and covered in a thin coating of mud and water) and continued our journey to the broken and repaired bridges, more mud and…mostly more mud. It was a muddy trail (as in up to your thighs muddy)
After those two days, we returned to the town of Oban (Stewart Island’s only town) on a much less bumpy ride. The first ride consisted of yard tall waves. We stayed at a quite little house about a mile from town and spent much of the two days there trying to accomplish an impossible puzzle. Unfortunately, we didn’t finish it.
That was all the excitement of Stewart Island (except for the Kakas I got to feed). After that we headed up to the Caitlins (southern part of the South Island). Yet again, we have spent our days lounging, taking short walks and sitting on the beach.
