{"id":472,"date":"2009-05-02T18:00:16","date_gmt":"2009-05-02T22:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/?p=472"},"modified":"2012-10-10T20:16:56","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T00:16:56","slug":"restoring-our-honeymoon-blog-day-5-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/?p=472","title":{"rendered":"Our Honeymoon blog: Day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Island Day 5 – The Road to Milford Sound
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We woke up and after a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up a few more things we needed – specially for\"\" the hike starting tomorrow, we started our day trip up to Milford Sound and back.\u00a0We also called ahead to book a spot on a boat tour of the Fjords (Milford is actually a fjord rather then a sound – bit of a misnomer by the guy who named the area ages ago)..
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As you can see from the map to the right, the road started out pretty flat, with gorgeous mountains in the distance.. but we quickly caught up to them, and beautiful sites ensued!
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There are a ton of points to stop at\u00a0along the way, so we targeted the ones we really wanted to do, and left the rest depending on timing..
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Here is a pic of the guide which the parks and rec folks make available on their site (http:\/\/doc.govt.nz<\/span><\/a>), showing many of the places you can stop and take a walk into the rainforests of Fjordland..(specific pamphlet: http:\/\/www.doc.govt.nz\/upload\/documents\/parks-and-recreation\/tracks-and-walks\/southland\/fiordland-day-walks.pdf<\/span><\/a> )
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\"\"Here is a pic where we were nearing the end of the flat land, and entering the mountains..
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\"\"Our first stop was the Mirror lakes.. Which, on a clear day, gives folks famous images of the southern alps reflected in the little ponds.. But alas, the rain was messing with that plan..
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Our first little hike was an amazingly blue stream \/ rapids.. I wish the blue that we saw, showed up more in these photos – and it was sooo clear!\u00a0 Any the water levels and number of waterfalls we were going to see, was all thanks to the rain.. So while it messed with some aspects of photos, the rain gave us the opportunity to enjoy the land, as it is 250 days of the year – wet, with waterfalls coming alive all around us…
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In the photo above, right about where my feet are when taking this photo, was where I very nearly slipped into the rapids, and said bye bye to the world! I like to refer to it as ‘Incident # 2’ \ud83d\ude09
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Here is a look back from the board walk, where you can see the moss I slipped on, while walking backwards for Mish to take a photo of me..
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Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to walk out on that rock and then think the boots I had on were going to grip anything I stood on!
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\"\"The trees in these forests are just absolutely covered with growth of all sorts.. Sometimes with many different coloured mosses, and other times, such as the pic on the right, with a thick layer of green moss.
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After this walk, we continued on despite the road looking like it was headed towards a dead end..
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\n<\/span>The dead end turns out to be Homer or Gertrude?\u00a0Saddle, where\u00a0Homer tunnel has been built to continue the road to Milford. before the tunnel, the mail man had to walk the Milford trek to deliver mail to Milford sound.. I think the tunnel was completed in the 50s?
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Here is a clip of our drive towards the tunnel – with a sample of the fact that waterfalls and snow capped mountains were everywhere we looked..
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\n<\/span>While waiting for the tunnel light to go green, we snapped some photos of the waterfalls around us.. There was another walk here, that would bring you up to the top, but we passed on this one..
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Then, still while we were waiting for the light, a wild parrot paid a visit.. The Kea parrot, which we had only previously \"\"known due to the millions of “Don’t feed the Kea” signs everywhere… Needless to say, the dumbass in the car was soon feeding the Kea.. (note the yellow sign in the background is just one of millions of such signs in NZ, which is basically saying don’t feed the birds)
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Once the light changed, we moved on, through a very roughly built tunnel.. lots of water dripping.. the walls were exactly as they looked when the last chunk was hammered off – no concrete or smoothing it over..
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Here is a little video of the tunnel drive:
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We emerged on the other side, to the views of still more amazing mountainscapes.. and a winding road back down into another valley..
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I can’t get over how beautiful the area was.. Even in the rain – maybe more so with the rain.. I dunno.. with clear skies we may have seen into the distance more, and maybe the tips of the mountains.. but the rain brought a definite natural look to the area.. and of course the waterfalls..
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One more side trip on the way before we actually got to Milford Sound.. This side walk was called the Chasm. It had more of the sooo blue, sooo clear water rushing down through smoothly sculpted stone and fallen trees.. Here is a look down the ‘Chasm’..
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Another example of the fern trees which are all around
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Next up.. A boat cruise around the waters of Milford Sound..
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South Island Day 5 – The Road to Milford Sound \u00a0 \u00a0 We woke up and after a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up a few more things we needed – specially for the hike starting tomorrow, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-zealand","category-trips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":779,"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}