Head South – Day 4

Woke up early to catch a flight to Queenstown.. and first thing we see outside our window (like they warned us), was a huge cruse liner pulling in silently.. It was early morning, and it was so quiet I don’t even think most the people on the boat knew they had arrived / were awake..

Anyway, we took off to the airport, returned the car, and hoped we would get on the flight we wanted..

When our names were called, it was another relief.. Such good luck on the stand by flights! Once onboard, the pilot informed us that unfortunately the skies were overcast, so we wouldn’t be able to take in the great views of the mountains from the air.. No problem – we’d go with the close up view we were planning on!

Once we arrived, it was a pretty quick process to get our camper. We had rented a 4 person camper since the little vans with toilets were sold out everywhere.. And we also went for the automatic so Michelle could drive without much to worry about. [turned out that we never used the toilet – so many public ones around.. but it was nice to have the insurance i suppose!] 

After a quick video which I had to watch to get familiar with the camper’s various bits, we were off to fill ‘er up. We headed for the first grocery store, right next to the airport basically, and bought mainly stuff for the upcoming 3 day hike, plus a couple more meals and foundational stuff…

Once we were loaded up, we headed out on the road for Te Anau. What a beautiful drive! It was raining on and off, but that didn’t deter at all..

Some more zig zag driving, but now with the camper, it wasn’t so fun 😉  We had a little incident – learning the hard way to remember to put the locking pin in the fridge!  One egg down, we continued on our way..

It was the first time I had seen a Deer farm.. I for one thought they looked very weird – I guess since my whole life I’ve only seen them as wild animals..And i’ve never seen a hundred deer in one spot, out in the open – seemed very unnatural. These folks like their deer meat I suppose.. We took some photos of the deer farms later on in the trip, so stay tuned for those..

Once we finally got to Te Anau, we picked a camp ground (a ‘Holiday Park’ – their equivalent to KOA I suppose), and got settled.  Tomorrow would see one of the world’s most beautiful drives – the Road to Milford Sound