I booked a Milford Sound cruise for Boxing Day because you look at the map and it's right there next to Queenstown... maybe an hour's drive. But no... you have to drive around a lake. It turned out to be a 4-5 hour drive each way.
Mr. Smith is ready to kill me right about now.
So we had to leave by 07:00 that morning because we were already booked on the 13:30 cruise. Maureen was sweet enough to make sure we had a good breakfast before we left. She put yogurt and fruit in our refrigerator and left some muesli out for us, as well. Guess what! She makes her own yogurt and muesli. It was some of the best yogurt I've ever eaten. Thankfully, Mr. Smith is not a big fan of yogurt, so I got to eat the whole bowl. :)
As we drove up to Milford Sound, we stopped off at Subway to pick up sandwiches and potato chips for lunch. Then you keep driving up and up and up into the beauty of the Sound. I cannot express enough how lovely the drive up was. Pictures don't do it justice. You should all go and see for yourselves!
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| Yeah. I'm lookin' at you. |
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| This is a path to a special place called The Chasm |
We used Mitre Peak Cruises for our tour of the Sound. It was recommended that we not miss the Milford Sound cruise. Okay. This next part is my opinion ONLY. I felt like the cruise was too long. I know that they can never guarantee this, but we saw no dolphins and no penguins. We did see a few seals sunning on a rock. But other than that, it was sitting on a boat with limited "good" seats that were taken immediately. The cruise was two hours long. Yes, there were wonderful waterfalls, but that's about it. I actually fell asleep for at least 20-30 minutes, sitting straight up. If you are going to do the cruise, I can only tell you that Mitre Peak Cruises was good. Their small boat was able to take us pretty close to a waterfall and right up to the rocks where the seals were sunning themselves.
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| Milford Sound cruise |
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| Heading out toward the Tasman Sea Sorry about the glare... we didn't get a "good" seat. LOL |
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| PIRATES! (kidding) |
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| Seal about to make a jump for it! |
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| There he goes! |
After the cruise, we went back to the car for a snack. We brought along my birthday cupcakes. Have I mentioned yet that it was quite hot today? Yeah, well, the cupcakes looked a little worse for wear and the icing was melting all over the place, but they were still quite yummy. Unfortunately, we couldn't share them with anyone as promised after they had been out in the heat all day. Although they still tasted good, they didn't look as pretty (as I'm sure you can imagine...)
So, we drove all the way back to Arrowtown for dinner, since we knew that no matter what ... Bonjour Restaurant would be serving. :)
But this time we ended up eating at the New Orleans Hotel / Mickey Finn's. We shared a pepperoni pizza, macaroni and cheese and french fries. Mr. Smith had cider. I had water. The food was actually pretty good. The macaroni and cheese should have been cooked longer and needed salt, but other than that... everything was very tasty.
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