H2 WOAH

Sooo we went to Milford Sound 2 weekends ago. Was it as beautiful as all the photographs say? Well, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, since it rained (and by rain I mean monsooned (and I know that's not a word)) allll weekend. We did see some sick waterfalls and almost got trapped there for the week. Here’s the lowdown:

Julia, Krystal (from SLU), Jonas (from Germany), and I rented a car from trusty ol' Jackie's again and drove to Te Anu on Friday night, where we camped about ½ an hour outside of. It started to rain the next morning as we were packing up the car, but it wasn't that bad until we started to drive through Fiordland, but when we got to Milford Sound was when it really started. We didn’t care though, it was still going to be a sweet kayak through the Sound (which is actually a fiord... incorrectly named). We got to the "town" of Milford (which consists of a lodge, cafe, and bar. That's it.), and bummed around in the cafe/park area for a bit, eating lunch and getting pumped to sea kayak. We then met Dan, our leader for the expedition, and one other German woman who was by herself. After some brief talk about safety and how to maneuver our kayaks, and hopping into some sweet-as thermals/fleeces/rain jackets/spray skirts, I hopped in the back of our tandem (Julia in the front), and we were off for a 4-hour paddle around the Sound/fiord.

Julia and Krystal looking fine in Rosco's sweet getup

It was pretty cloudy, so we couldn't see the views that you saw in the lodge posters, but it was still spectacular. We kayaked along side a seal for a bit, and saw some really cool waterfalls with all the new rain. We actually made it out where Dan said was one of his favorite places that he hadn't seen in a while (woo-hooo! We're not fat, lazy, Americans!). Kayaking along side of the mountains was so cool! They literally just lifted right out of the water and rose up for hundreds of feet. With our trip, Dan also told us all sorts of history behind the area- colonial and Maori.

A whole new meaning to "mountains meet the water"

We ended our trip soaking from the rain, and pretty chilly once we stopped moving. Lucky for us, Rosco's Kayaking has an AMAZING tent with a heater that dries clothes and bodies sooo quickly. Running back out to the car to grab clothes was a painful experience. When we were changing, Dan asked where we were planning on staying for the night, and when we told him we were planning on tenting it, he offered up the guide’s summer house that had about 4 empty beds for lack of guides staying there in the off-season. Ca-ching! So after helping him close up, we went to the house. We were able to use a real stove to cook our dinner, and, get this, immediately wash our dishes, in a well-light area- all while staying dry. What a luxury. The house also had a television (with the countdown of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time… in New Zealand. Yeah, I was thrown for a loop too), and a heater. So we hung out with Dan for a bit, made dinner when he went to the bar, Dan came back, made venison steaks (sooooo good), and then we went to the bar. There were some pretty interesting people there- we were highly entertained by a group of men who had come up to go fishing for the weekend and were convinced we were going to do some sort of wrestle, which consisted of looping a belt between you and your partner’s back of the head, getting on all fours, and who ever pulls the belt off wins. Apparently it’s a pretty big bachelor party game. We told the guy that we were strictly worm-wrestlers though, but it was really funny to watch. We left after that, and headed back to Dan’s, where we vegged out for a bit and then hit the hay.

In the morning, we woke up to the absolute dumping of rain on the roof, thunder, and lightening. We were very, very grateful to be inside. Again, we cooked while staying warm and dry, met some other guides and got ready to leave…which didn’t work so well. We got about 10 minutes down the road and were told to turn around by the Milford Helicopter Officials- the road was closed. We returned to the café/bar area, and got ready to spend some good quality time there. Since we were some of the firsts there, we snagged the couches. A guide that we had met that morning at Dan’s showed up and told us she was going to try to still go out, the last time she had seen it dumping like this she was stuck for 6 days, and she had a flight to Africa to catch in 3! But it didn’t really work out for her too well, we saw her a couple hours later. We passed the time playing cards, trying to connect to the dialup internet (key word: trying), and not to thinking about the papers/presentations that were due that coming week. Whatever, it’s just New Zealand, right?

When I first saw these waterfalls, I immediately thought of a ski mountain!

We were right next to that waterfall less than 24 hours before this was taken!

Around 3:30 we decided to go to the one and only store in Milford (which was a room in the lodge down the road) to get some more food, and found out there was and evacuation convoy leading people out in an hour! So we hopped in the car, and drove to the line of cars waiting to get lead out of Milford. Since it wasn’t supposed to stop raining for about 2 or 3 more days, they decided they may as well get people out when it was still semi-safe. There was probably a line of about 30 or 40 cars, all just following the officials out of the town. Although it was really shitty weather, we saw some amazing waterfalls and rivers. As I’ve said about all my pictures, they don’t do justice to the situation we were in.

So we got out dry and safe, and made it back to Dunedin around 11, which was a bit later than we originally planned, but much earlier than the Thursday night we were getting ready for. Turns out, the next day, there was a bridge that got completely washed out on the main road, and they were airlifting people out of the town and the Milford track. So our day turned out as well as it could have, it’s just always an adventure here!

This was taken right out of our car window... aka the water was running right onto the road
Let's hope this road stays in tact...