Dad picked me up at maybe tennish and we went to the car repair place near Queenstown. We tried to be really nice to the mechanics there and they soon checked out the rims, hammered out the rims, and gave us a new spare. All included in the insurance.
Grabbing Lesley, we set off for Milford Sound, sans Jim. He was at work but had told us that the 1 hour drive would be fine. We set off, Dad driving and me navigating. It soon became clear that something was not quite right with our timings and that Milford Sound, based on how far we had travelled in nearly an hour, was surely three hours away!
We picked up a French guy on the way who was backpacking around New Zealand and had been to some of the smaller Pacific islands. This was particularly of interest to Dad and Lesley who were headed to Fiji a couple of weeks later. He was a chatty guy. We dropped him off after a while and then stopped ourselves in Te Anua for some lunch. By this stage we realised that we were probably not going to see much else that day. Te Anau had some bugs that *sometimes* light up in the dark, and other things that I was not able to persuade anyone to find interesting. So we pressed on.
Soon it became much more beautiful, the land was clearly changing as we entered Fjordland. Lots of forests and lots of weather! Spectacular views of looming mountains.
When we got the place itself, the initial view of the entrance to the Sound was beautiful. We took a fair few photos, aware that the boats had done their last trips for the day and that this was all we were going to see. We had a coffee and a skanky pork pie in the pub there, and headed back.
I did the driving on the way back. Every turn on the rural roads in New Zealand gave an indication of how quickly you should take it, and in the pitch black I put a lot of trust in these. The Ford Focus was very grippy and this driving was exciting, at least for a couple of hours.
At Queenstown, I met up with Chris for a couple of beers in town.
french guy
met chris
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