Fifth Day at New Zealand - Milford Sound

UToday, we are goingg to have a one day trip to Milford Sound. I have made reservation for cruise at 1 pm. So, we need to get there by noon. As I said from my last post, it's going to rain today. Indeed, it was raining almost the whole day. The route wasn't that smooth either. We had to take extra precaution for the trip. By the way, toilet wasn't that easy as well for that route. They do have portable toilet along the way, but trust me, you probably won't want to do any business there. There were lots of mosquitoes or insects as soon as you open the toilet door. It was gross.

On the way, there was one tunnel that could only fit one direction of cars. It was a dark tunnel. There is a traffic light and a timer besides it that tells us when to go and how long more we need to wait for the other direction to be clear. 

We reached Milford Sound around noon. So, we directly headed to a cafe to have our lunch. Luckily we prepared peanut butter and jelly bread, because we can't find any vegetarian food that my mom could have in the cafe. I just realized that I didn't take any picture of the food that we had for lunch. But I remember we ordered, vegetable soup with bread, sausage pie, vegetable pie, coffee and hot chocolate. The soup was quite nice for me. It was a thick brocolli soup. 

We then had to walk from the cafe to the port to take the cruise. It was still raining, so, the 15-20 mins walk wasn't that pleasant. This is cruise that we took, and I took the picture before we boarded the cruise. I noticed that most people take the big cruise instead of this one. But, my brother said that the big cruise won't be able to make a stop at some interesting spots. 

The cruise journey will take about 2 hours. The captent announced the theme for the day was "Waterfalls". Indeed, almost all stops that we had was to see waterfalls. There is one stop where he took us to see sea lions. He brought the cruise so close to a waterfall, where we could really feel the splash of water. Some people got wet because of that. Of course I didn't dare to stand too near. 

We got back to the port around 3 pm. The weather was still bad at that time. We straight away go back to Te anau after the cruise trip. 

We arrived at Te Anau before 6 pm if I am not mistaken. We accompanied mom and dad to have their meal at Ming Garden chinese restaurant, then we plan to have our dinner at "The Fat Duck", a famous western restaurant in town. But, unfortunately their business was really good on that day and they won't take any more customer without a reservation. So, we just walked to other restaurant to get our food. We ordered grilled oranger and salmon. I like the salmon. They marinated with manuka honey. It was yummy. 

After dinner, my parents stay at the apartment and we had an evening walk to the city centre.