Queenstown - Milford Sound - Gunn's Camp
woke up early our second day and caught the stray bus. we were lucky there were only eight of us on the tour, plus our driver ET. tom from england, maria from mexico and kyle from canada. they were all really cool and we became really good friends with tom, decided we're going to england to visit over Christmas holiday.
we made our way out of queenstown through the beautiful scenery and to te anau, where we purchased our tickets to take a tour of milford sound. here we got some groceries for dinner and snacked at a cute cafe before getting back on the bus. we made stops along the way to milford sound to do short little walks or see some great views, things like that. as i said the scenery through the mountains and snow was unbelievable. one of the coolest things was going through a tunnel that had been hand chizzles through the center of a mountain. it was a very steep hill and barely lit inside, with huge icicles hanging down. it was creepy but awesome.
milford sound was really neat. it is technically misnamed as a sound because it was formed by glaciers not by rivers or other forms of land erosion so it should be called milford fjord (just a little interesting fact). we took a big boat out and went all around the sound, and saw tons of cool waterfalls. it was beautiful, of course just like everything on this trip. hopefully my video will work, its hard to capture places like this in a photo...
after milford sound we started our treck to Gunn's Camp. gunn's camp is an old place where the men who built the roads, and chizzled the tunnel out lived with their families. it used to be a much larger town obviously to hold all of these people but now its a few cabins, a general store/souvenir shop, bathrooms and common area with a large dinning room and kitchen. everything is run off of a generator which turns off at 10:30pm and comes back on at 7:30am. it was one of the coolest places i have ever stayed in my life... but i'll get to that more in a second.
on the way to gunn's camp we pulled over right after going back through the tunnel through the mountain for an epic snowball fight. we stepped over onto the fresh snow beyond where the road had just been scrapped and the snow was up a little bit past our knees. we were all laughing so hard we could barley breathe. what a great memory! and then we decided to have a race to a huge boulder probably twenty feet or so away, well this was probably one of the hardest things i've ever done in my life haha lifting your legs that high in order to try to run and falling constantly. it was hilarious. but i made it to the rock, i was extremely proud of myself. we were all completely covered in fresh, cold, wonderful snow (that tasted amazing i might add).
as we headed back to the bus dreading being soaking wet, there were kia parrots trying to get inside of our bus. these are parrots unique to NZ and they are apparently one of the smartest birds in the world. they are a cool green color and when they fly they have this beautiful orange/red color under their wings, although they are pretty big and a little scary if you're looking right at one up close. it was funny though because people were pulling over both times we passed to try to get picture with them and see them because they love coming up close. we ran them off and really started heading to gunn's camp. we turned on some country music (keith urban - days go by, and dixie chicks - wide open spaces). we were just singing and taking in the winding, snowy mountain with the sun shining on them. perfection. i felt so alive and so lucky to be in the exact moment that i was in.
on to gunn's camp now... we drove down snowy dirt roads for about thirty minutes to get there from the main highway, we arrived and met the couple who run's gunn's camp they were so sweet! then we settled in and learned how to keep our fires going with the wood and coal to keep our cabins as warm as we could. then we headed out on a short hike to see a cool waterfall. just laughing and carrying on the whole time. it was awesome that we got to see the moon rising up over the mountain while we were there! we found a swinging bridge over a little creek there which was a lot of fun and beautiful obviously. then we all cooked a big stir fry dinner together, we had chicken and rice and tons of veggies and ate family style. it was awesome, and yummy i might add!
after dinner we walked with the man who runs the camp and saw some glow worms in the woods (just like the ones we had seen on the beach). interesting fact about new zealand, there are really like no animals here because they are so remote and so young. there are a lot of birds, but when we were walking through the woods we didn't have to be scared about snakes or any little creatures, or big creatures like bears and things like that for that matter. how strange huh? oh except for one animal which ET made sure to warn us about... wild boars (yes like in LOST). the man who took us on the walk had a pig poker/killer thing just in case. and on our walk back to camp we heard something coming from the woods and he told us to stay still right where we were. he ran up into the bush (forest here) and it sounded like he was killing a wild hog. like really sounded like it, it was so scary. and then when the noise stopped, ET jumped out from the top of the hill where they were and scared us all to death. like my heart stopped. haha it may not sound like it was scary, but standing on a path in the pitch black in the middle of the woods thinking there is a gigantic wild boar about to attack you is pretty freaky. it was a great joke though.
we found our way, still shaking, back to the common room for charades and sing-a-longs. i felt like i was back at camp! the people taking care of us were so much fun, and charades was hilarious because we played using new zealand sayings, so some of them were confusing and we had no idea what we were doing. then tom played the guitar for us some, and lynn sang to us, as well as kyle. it was a wonderful evening to end a lovely day. we went back to our warm(ish) cabins and got the fires as warm as we could, bundled up under three comforters each and our warmest clothes and dozed off. i loved this experience and i'm sure i will never really have another one like it. falling asleep right next to a beautiful snow covered mountain in a peaceful place with wonderful people, there was just this beautiful stillness in the air and although it was very crisp, it was a very refreshing rest.
stop along the way in the snow.
our bus!
video of milford sound.
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