Te Anau, Gateway to Milford Sound

Te Anau, New Zealand!  How exotic it sounds!

In my mind, travel is akin to reading books.  Arriving at a new destination is like picking up a new book.  Still a little heartsick from finishing the last good read, saying goodbye to the story and the characters that I’ve spent the last many days with, I start a new book.  At first, I’m not sure I like it.  It’s unfamiliar and has a tone I may not be accustomed to. But as I read on and slowly begin to see the setting in my mind’s eye, get introduced to the characters, and start to figure out what’s going on, I begin to become engaged – rather better said, I get hooked.  If I exchange the word “book” for “next destination,” the experience is very similar. 

This next book is set in New Zealand.

Stan and I first visited this country, this next-door neighbor to Australia and Antarctica, about 6 years ago.  We have since referred to it as our greatest travel mistake.  We did not plan enough time here.  We toured the cities of the North Island and visited the glaciers, Fox Glacier, and Franz Josef here on the South Island.  But we missed maybe the greatest wonders of this beautiful two Island country especially those down south like Milford Sound and the great northern region of Marlboro wine country.

We returned to this vast, sparsely populated country yesterday arriving in Queenstown, NZ at about 6 pm, and started our two-hour drive to Te Anau in the newly engaged rental car. Anxious to get to our home, we did not shop for food or supplies.  We simply headed south.  The airport is on the outer boundaries of Queenstown. Moments after leaving the car park, we found ourselves in the farmland.  No more city was to be seen.  There were no stores and no restaurants for miles.  And many miles more!  We were surrounded by massive mountains, golden-grassed raised-venison farms, sheep farms, and tiny lights-out communities of less than ten houses.  The few gas stations we passed were unmanned, totally self-service with no attendants.  New Zealand is militant about bringing food items into their country; therefore we had little to eat.  We had salt, pepper, dry bean soup mix, cheese, and raisins.  We thought we may have be forced to have cheese and raisins for dinner.

The sky became dark.  Black dark.  We drove on.

After two hours through pure nothingness, we arrived at the town of Te Anau.  Since this town is the launching point for Milford Sound explorations, we found civilization, but only one restaurant and one liquor store for a bottle of wine were still open at 8 pm, but only for a few minutes more.    We bought wine and then headed to The Ranch for dinner. Luke Brian, of all performers, was howling like a tomcat on the mounted TV.  Tonight’s fare was tender roast lamb with roasted beetroot, carrot, and parsnip with green peas.  Oh, they were singing my song!  The savory and hearty meal made me think of my mother’s Sunday lunches of beef pot roast when I was a kid.  My heart!

At 9:30 am next morning we stood at the meeting point dressed in our cold weather gear, waiting for our tour to Milford Sound.  It is very chilly here in the late evenings and early mornings.  The weather is conducive to good snuggles and sleeping soundly but rolling out of bed to get dressed in the mornings is quite frigid!! 

Sometimes Stan and I imagine our future days when we can no longer run, walk for miles, climb steps easily  or carry heavy luggage.  That we think will be our days of doing bus tours across America to see the USA!  We will get to know the other 50 or 60 passengers, mostly people with walkers, and we will stop at buffet restaurants and see the highlights of each destination.  Woo-hoo!

We got a taste of that today.  To travel and see the USA this way is no longer appealing.  We might have to do something else.  Among the passengers, someone is always late, someone always speaks too loudly and some just don’t know how to stop talking.  The best sights are usually on the other side of the bus and the food at the buffet might be filling, but it’s probably high-cal and bland!

When our time for international traveling is over and our only travel option is via a bus tour, I guess we will either go or stay home and play cards with the others at the old folks’ home (Stan’s term for a retirement community, not mine!)

We boarded the big bus with assigned seats.  Ours were in the back half of the bus because most of the bus guests boarded the bus in Queenstown several hours before our pick-up time.   Oh, I pity them for that much longer bus ride!   

Milford Sound is one of 15 fiords in South Island New Zealand Fiordland National Park.  Some of the fiords are 25 miles long.  Milford is the only one accessible by road to the sound.  Our bus was roomy, very comfortable, and equipped with USB plugs but the ride took a full two hours with stops at small, winding trout rivers flowing along the mountain base and at designated scenic lookouts.  Mirror Lake was an outstanding stop showing a picture-perfect reflection of the ruggedly carved mountains upside down in the clear and placid glassy-looking water.

Finally, at the world-renown Milford Sound, we boarded the big boat and headed down the wide body of saltwater hundreds of feet deep, weaving among the mountains along the sound.  The name Milford Sound is a misnomer.  The correct name should be Milford Fiord because that is what it is.  As a side note, these watery geographic miracles are called fiords in New Zealand while other countries use the Norwegian spelling of fjords.

To be clear, though equally beautiful, a sound is a river valley filled with seawater while a fiord is a valley formed over thousands of years by a retreating ice age glacier.  Both contain seawater.  Although I find conflicting information relating to the description of each, typically it seems, fiords have steep rocky walls and rugged cliffs carved out by the glacier, and saltwater passages while sounds have softer, mountainsides, and contain a wider body of seawater.

The shiny inky black waters of the Milford fiord encased in intimidatingly huge mountains with several waterfalls were breathtakingly beautiful, so beautiful that the scenery almost became redundant.  We have seen fjords before which probably jaded our perception.  This excursion is the primary reason we returned to New Zealand but sadly, Milford Sound showed us nothing new.  We were lucky though; the day was one of the area’s rare no-rain days.  The sky was as blue as a sky can be; the air was clear, not cold but notably cool.  It was not unpleasant at all but I could not get wait to get off that boat and more importantly, off that bus to get back to my cozy room on the edge of Lake Te Anau. 

Rain, heavy rain awakened us early the next morning.  It rains over 200 days a year in Fiordland National Park but the rain usually does not last all day.  In heavy rain periods in Milford Sound, up to 1,000 waterfalls can be seen pouring down the stone faces of the fiord.   When the rain stopped late morning we walked.   Although most of the trek was dry and the sun peaked out to warm us now and then, we did encounter a few sprinkles.    We walked around Lake Te Anau, stopping to examine unusual dotted orange mushrooms that popped up overnight during the rain, and to take a look at wooden possum traps baited with whole eggs by the wildlife commission.  Possums in Australia and New Zealand are not like those in the USA at all.  Possums here are not native to New Zealand but once introduced here, they thrived.  They have no predators so their population has exploded.  Originally brought here for hunting and also to help control rabbits, possums have become a serious threat to indigenous birds and other wildlife.   They will eat anything.  People here hate them and the government is trying to rid the country of these pests to protect the natural wildlife.

As we walked along the lake’s rocky shores, we came upon a lovely bird sanctuary that sits along the lake.  It serves rescued and sometimes endangered New Zealand birds and ducks.   One pair of richly colored ducks raced toward us in the water perhaps thinking we might feed them.  Those ducks knew feeding the birds is not allowed but they fussed at us anyway.  In another tightly fenced compound was a pair of iridescent blue and black flightless, native birds about the size of a small turkey, called Takahe.  Once thought extinct until 1948 when a community of about 200 birds was discovered living in a remote mountain area.

Had we walked all the way around the lake, it would have consumed four days.  So for us, a few hours hike was enough!  Returning to town, we watched a couple of very pale-skinned young men take a plunge in the lake.   Brrrr! 

The Ranch was serving bangers and mash, real comfort food for a cold day.  I have not had shepherd’s pie in such a long time but bangers and mash are equally satisfying.  The small resort town’s shops invited us to do a little window-shopping of expensive stuff like high-end sporting goods, heavenly wool sweaters, and fancy coffees. 

New Zealand is a fine place, especially if one enjoys stunning scenery, and abundant outdoor cool-weather adventures and exploring.  Camping in tents or caravans (as campers and RVs are called here), backpacking, hiking, and long-distance mountain biking are king here.  The season here is quickly heading to winter; trees are in their glorious reds and yellow dresses  While the temps are noticeably cooling down, we have witnessed a few hard-core souls plunge into an ice-cold lake for a swim or bathe in a frigid river, and some folks are still marching around wearing tank tops, shorts, and flip-flops but for this Southern girl, I’m in a jacket and neck buff at all times.

I will say this though . . . the naturally cool evening temps down here create a first-rate sleeping atmosphere.    G’nite to ya!