Today is another cruise through a sound in Fjordland national park, but instead of driving 2 hours out and all the rest, we are flying.
I got up and wrote a bit of blog before we left to get breakfast. I got eggs on toast and a hot chocolate. My chocolate came with the classic heart shape that often comes on coffee. Not that it's a big deal, but it's the first time I've ever had one so it was cool to me. The breakfast was ok but my over easy eggs were cooked through. I love the runny yolk.
We went back to the hotel and I wrote more of yesterday's blog. I decided to do a load of laundry since we have the machines and plenty of soap. The first day here in Queenstown I did proper laundry with a load of whites and a load of darks, then a final load of jeans. Today I did an all in one load with cold water and called it good. Don't tell my wife. When shopping, Mike thought he bought a bag of detergent pods and a box of dryer sheets, but the sheets turned out to be another box of detergent powder. So we could do about 200 loads of laundry and we'll be leaving all the detergent.
I finished the blog then headed we headed out the front of the hotel to wait for our ride to the airport. There was a lady also standing out front and when the ride came, she also got in to head to Milford Sound. In fact, when we got all checked in and ready to fly, she was in the co-pilot's seat with Mike and I in the 2 seats right behind her. And when I took videos out the front and sides, she's often in them. Her name is Christina and she was from Germany. So now you'll know.
Our pilot was Ben. My first thought was to ask him when he was going to graduate from high school. He was probably late 20s to early 30s but looked sooooo young. He had a whispy little mustache and beard, but who am I to point out flaws in other people's facial hair. Once my wife was asked what was my favorite thing to pretend and she answered "That he can grow a mustache".
Ben was a great pilot and greased both landings. I never felt a bit of unease while he flew.
So we boarded the plane. It was a Cessna Caravan an held 14 people. We had a total of 11 people on board including the pilot and a 3 month old baby. Ben gave us a pretty standard safety briefing to keep our seat belts buckled at all time, showed where the floatation devices were and the fire extinguisher. He also said we were free to use our cell phones in normal mode.
Ben started the plane and taxied us over to the main runway. A jet was just landing and we had to wait for it to roll out at the end, then taxi all the way back down past us and to the terminal. This airport doesn't have taxi ways, so even jets have to taxi out and back on the main runway. I'd never seen that.
Once the jet passed us, we just turned onto the runway and Ben gunned it. We were off the ground pretty quick. As you can image, the views were amazing. We turned nearly due west toward the mountains and within minutes we had mountain peaks all around us.
I thought it was so cool I called my wife on video call. She answered and I switched on the normal camera to let her see the view outside. "That's cool" she said, then started telling me about her day. I guess I was a little let down that she didn't really want to see anything, but that's my wife. "It don't take me long to see a rock" is one of her sayings. We chatted a bit then we hung up.
Next I called my daughter Klair. She instant turned off everything and sat down to watch, now THAT'S MORE LIKE IT!! We couldn't talk because my phone was on speaker rather than on my ear buds. So I hung up and called back. BTW, I was calling on facebook messenger. Now we could talk so I gave her some view out different windows. The signal started to get weaker as we got farther into the hills, so I hung up to call my other daughter.
Koren answered but said she couldn't see much. It was too pixelated. I held the camera real steady to let it fill in details then she said "HOLY HECK" that is so cool. We were just passing a mountain peak. It felt like it was 100 feet out the window. The signal kept weakening as we talked and eventually it died without saying goodbye, but I was happy.
After I lost cell service I decided to do a video. So I hit the video button and started filming. I would film 5 to 10 seconds at a time, then pause and point somewhere else. I kept do that right up until we landed. It got me a little over 5 minutes of footage. I was counting on Mike to take plenty of other pictures to add to the blog.
Ben kept us at an altitude below the peaks so we felt like we were flying right through the heart of the mountains, because we were. He didn't play chicken with the peaks or anything, but he did weave around a bit and passed pretty close to a few cliff faces. There were also a few up and down drafts and we could really feel them and see their effects because we were so close. It was a real blast and made the airplane ride the major attraction of the day, even more than the pretty views.
Eventually we broke out of the mountains onto the coast. Ben began our descent out through the Sound to the ocean, then flew a gentle 180 back in toward the docks and the airport. We descended pretty steep on final and landed with a very positive thump on the runway. No bouncing and no harsh sideway pull due to crosswinds. Ben taxi'd us behind all the other planes then shut the engine off. There was no ground crew, no tie downs, and no chocks to block the wheels. Just shut it off, set the parking brake and hop out.
We unloaded from the plane and took a full bus to the terminal. Ben split us up into different groups, gave us our tickets and sent us on our way. Mike and I wound up on a massive ship. We were nearly the last to board. As soon as we got on board they sent us down stairs to the "International Buffet" and said it was closing in 5 minutes. So we grabbed plates and stacked them with everything we might want. I got some lamb roast, beef ribs, mussels, a small salad, broccoli, and bread. We also got a little cup of ice cream, kind of like what you used to get at school lunch.
The food wasn't bad, but by the time we finished we were already 15 minutes into our cruise. We headed upstairs but it was packed with people, so we headed to the bow again. There were people there but it wasn't packed. So we stayed there almost the whole rest of the cruise.
The sun was on the canyon walls to our left and we were on the left side of the sound. That meant we were warn, but it also meant we had harsh lighting for most of the outbound cruise. I took some pictures but many were just blurry messes due to the lack of contrast.
There was a very tall waterfall in a little bay that the boat pulled into. I didn't catch the narration about the bay or waterfall, but the ship started to slowly rotate in that bay until we'd done a full 360 turn, then it pulled out and back on our way.
We had barely pulled past the end of the sound when the boat made a wide turn and we headed back into the sound and toward the dock. We were only 45 minutes into the trip.
Now we were in the shade which gave a bit more contrast. We were still getting the stream of bell pictures but it slacked allot.
We came to another large waterfall and the narrator said it was fed by glacial water. He also said that being sprayed by the falls would make you feel 10 years younger. So the boat slowly nudged in, closer and closer until there was a pretty constant mist of water cascading over us. There was a good crowd of people for a few minutes but we didn't stay in there long and they all went back out.
We were only 90 minutes before we found ourselves back at the docks and unloading. That was much shorter than Doubtful Sound yesterday. We unloaded and went into the terminal to wait for the rest of our group and for Ben to return for us. Mike asked at the desk and they said Ben was about 15 minutes away from landing with his 2nd group.
We all met up when Ben got there and headed for the busses. A short ride back to the airport then we loaded up and Ben took us home.
The ride back wasn't nearly as adventurous as the ride out. We climbed about 1000 ft above the the peaks and went straight as an arrow back to Queenstown. Ben still narrated bits and pieces, but the adventurous flying was over. He again landed us with great precision then let us out.
There was a taxi waiting for us and Christina. He drove us back to our hotel, that's when she introduced her self and told us where she was from. She's touring New Zealand alone for the next 3 weeks, then hoping she can get home since her flights take her through the middle east, where our president is conducting a hostile business takeover.
We said goodbye and headed back to the room to offload and take a break. It was only 3:00 and there was plenty of day left. We decided to do a bit of shopping in Queenstown so we drove to our favorite parking spot, then walked into town. After only 20 minutes, we found the item we were after. We weren't ready for dinner so we just got a snack. We saw another crepe shop, so I got a crepe with strawberries and nutella. Mike got a paris special. We sat out in the middle of the lane and people watched while we ate.
When we finished our Crepes, we drove out to the Kawarau Bridge about 15km out of town. It is the first commercial bungee jumping site in the world. The bridge is 141 feet tall and stil does bungee jumping today, except that it doesn't. It was closed when we got there. Either end of the season or it's going through refurbishment because there was scaffolding on the nearby buildings.
We walked around and took a few pictures but there wasn't much to see.
We went back to the hotel for a while and I wrote more of this blog. We talked about what to have for dinner and I said it was probably time to resort to pizza. I started trying to explain why it would be a good time but just wound up saying "Pizza Good" and that was enough for Mike so we headed to the best rated pizza in the area. I got a medium pepperoni and mushroom, Mike got a hawaiian. Both were good but I left half of mine because I just couldn't eat it all.
Our hotel is called LaQuinta as the Remarkables. The Remarkables is the mountain range beside us and they are as their name states. Mike found that there is a ski resort on the mountain, and for a small fee you can drive up to it, so we headed that way after the pizza. It was a very twisty road. We stopped a few times as we climbed to take some pictures. At one point Mike said "Wow the city looks cool from up here" and I replied "Yeah, just like it did on the plane ride this morning". He told me I could get out of the car and walk home.
Near the top we saw a red van with a young couple parked in a clearing. They were sitting on chairs enjoying the sunset. There were bikes hung on the back and surf boards on the roof. I assumed they were wild camping and planning to stay the night. It was a beautiful place to do so.
We didn't make it all the way up as the sun had set and it was rapidly getting dark. We headed back down and made it to the hotel in time to get a parking space instead of being forced to pay for city parking.
Now I'm about to finish this blog and try to add pictures to day 4 and publish it. Not sure I'll get that much done.
My steps today were 7,000 or 3.3 miles
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