Before leaving Invercargill we had to visit Pak n’Save to replenish our supplies. We couldn’t find the wine section so we – i.e. Diane – asked someone. Apparently Invercargill is the only city in NZ that doesn’t allow supermarkets to sell alcohol. You have to go to a bottle shop instead, of which there are many; they even have drive throughs, which seems to me to send the wrong message.
Anyway, with tears in our eyes, we set off for Te Anau without (much) alcohol.
We stopped in Lumsden and decided to apply for this job vacancy at Route 6. 
I’m delighted to report that we were hired, although it was only a temp role. Route 6 turned out to be the local Post Office as well as a café; this has to be the best Post Office counter ever! And the bonnet was full of flat pack boxes and padded envelopes.
From here on there are always mountains in view and the road alternates between long, straight stretches and short, winding sections. When you get to Te Anau, this changes dramatically. We bypassed the town and suddenly found ourselves driving beside Lake Te Anau, with magnificent views of the lake. Te Anau is the largest lake in South Island and the deepest in NZ. Sitting high in Ermintrude we were able to see over the vegetation beside the road, but stopping places with a view were few and far between.
We’d planned to stop for the day at Knobs Flat, near the top of the lake. However, the satnav had taken us on the fast road rather than the scenic one so we decided to push on to Milford Sound.
From Te Anau Downs to Milford Sound you have spectacular views coming at you from all directions. To start with it varies between wooded hills, open fields, bracken and gorse and the occasional archway of leaves formed by the woods on either side of the road. You’re climbing gently all the time and the view changes to dark, forbidding mountains with waterfalls streaming straight down them like veins.
Then, in the middle of nowhere, you come to a warning sign for traffic lights! We’d arrived at Homer Tunnel, which is a single lane throughout its 1200m. The entrance is literally a hole in a vertical rock face and the tunnel itself is ragged and uneven, as if it was just blasted out and not finished.
From the moment you enter the tunnel you’re going downhill and it gets steeper after you exit at the other end, with plenty of hairpin bends, narrow stretches, rock fall areas and single track bridges. As it was raining continually by now and tour buses were coming thick and fast in the other direction, it made for an exciting drive!
We didn’t quite make Milford Sound, as the only camp site in the area is just before you get there. It you want to get away from it all, this is the place to be. The mobile signal started fading as we drove alongside Te Anau, which meant the van lost the internet. There was no internet at the camp site and our dish couldn’t find a satellite signal. You could stay here and have no idea what’s happening in the rest of the world.
Our night at Milford Sound was hardly restful. Ermintrude swayed so much in the wind that our soap bottle fell off the shelf, and the rain came down in sheets all night.
In the morning we went into Milford Sound itself and it appeared to be nothing more than a series of car parks, a bus park and a tour boat harbour. Of course, when you’ve got a hood over your head to keep the rain off, all you can see is the path in front of your feet, but I don’t think I missed anything. There wasn’t even a decent view of the Sound because of all the tour boats. What we did see was quite magnificent, but with the incessant rain and cloud tumbling down the mountainsides, we were glad we hadn’t booked a cruise.
I read on an information board that Milford’s challenge was to remain unspoiled by its success as a tourist destination. Perhaps this would have been easier if they hadn’t built a bus park and tour boat harbour!
The only way out of Milford Sound – by road, at least – is back the way you came to Te Anau, so we set off. On the way down we stopped at The Chasm; there’s a 15 minute walk up some gravel tracks interspersed with wooden bridges and you come to a viewing platform above a waterfall on the Cleddau River. There are some fine examples of how stone can be eroded by flowing water. And I finally got a photo of a kea, although not a very good one – the photo, not the kea.
After passing back through Homer Tunnel, I was saying what a shame it was that we were two hours from the nearest coffee. Then we came across Coffee Cat with her mobile coffee van in a layby! Apparently she drives from south of Te Anau to there every day and sells coffee. Diane asked if it wasn’t a fairly lonely existence and she said she works with a colleague who usually stations herself at The Chasm; today was her day off. This is on the other side of the tunnel and there’s no mobile signal. Takes all sorts.
The coffee was very welcome and shortly after that the weather took a turn for the better too. We were going to stop at Mirror Lakes, but there were no less than seven tour buses parked there, as well as several cars, so we gave that a miss. In fact, our timing was impeccable because from there onwards, there was bus after bus heading towards Milford.
By the time we arrived at Te Anau the sun was shining. We checked in to a camp site and then discovered that the door to the living part of Ermintrude wouldn’t latch. I called the rental company and they said the retaining bar had probably moved. So I smacked it with a hammer; that improved it but it still wasn’t right and I didn’t want to risk breaking it. We drove down the road to a workshop at the local Caltex station and explained the problem. After cursing at the designer, the mechanic smacked the bar with a hammer. It did the job and away we went, with a warning not to hit it too hard as it will “break like a carrot”.
Parked back at the site, we set off to explore the town and then walked for a couple of km along the lake to the wildlife centre. Among other birds, they have two pairs of South Island kaka and several antipodes parakeets. We found a tub marked please feed the ducks so we did – and they then followed us around for a while as we looked at other enclosures!
Tomorrow is going to be sunny, and we’re off to Queenstown.
Steve and Diane's New Zealand Adventure 