Near Te Anau
How I wish I could write something like "the cruise was fantastic and Milford Sound was so beautiful." Well I'm sure it is, but I'll have to content myself with other people's photos and my imagination. The drive to the Sound was sprinkled with fantastic scenery, but the closer and closer I got, the worse and worse the weather became. By the time I climbed the pass, I decided the crazy freezing rain was just not somthing to take lightly and ended up camping in my rented station wagon at Gunn Lake Park, about 30 minutes outside of Milford Sound town. It stormed like crazy all night long, the freezing rain and wind rattling the top of the car in a rhythmic drone.
The next morning, still in massive rain and wind, I drove over the pass through the tunnel and ended up stuck behind a road closure gate some 15 km out of town.
After the snow stopped
And this is the only road into town, with Milford Sound at the end of it. There was a car park nearby and I waited there with about a dozen other cars for quite a few hours until it because clear that I was going to miss the cruise. I did get a visit from a large cheeky bird that landed on my side mirror and pecked at the window until I gave him some bread. He did this for about an hour before moving on to the next car. Finally, in frustration about the closure, I just abandoned the whole Sound thing and headed back for my next stop: Queenstown. There was no indication the road would open any time soon or even why it was closed and no body else seemed to know either. It wasn't until that night, when checking my email, that I got a note from the cruise operator stating that the road had been closed yesterday due to a rock slide and would probably not open again for a few days. Oh well. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be.
