The forcast was suppose to be nice for the next 3 days, so we went to bed hoping for the best. Upon waking up we were blessed with a gorgeous day, not a cloud in the sky but friggin' cold. Since we had left Queenstown the temperature had slowly gotten colder and the trips to the bathrooms in the night or early morning were painfully chilly. The first thing we did was get dressed in some layers as it was maybe only 2 or 4 degrees out and I think Ray and I put on all of the clothes we had. Thank god for our HH base layers, just didn't want to have to use them so soon into our trip. We ate, cleaned up, finished packing the daypack and made our way to the road for our pickup.
A mini van pulled up and we hopped in, headed back into town to meet up with the tour bus taking us into Milford Sound. Our tour guid/bus driver "Allen" grew up in the area and gave us a nice comentary as we drove into the sound (which is apperently really a fiord). We stoped at a few places along the way for photos and a bit of background about the area. Crossing through Hommer tunnel, we headed on down towards the Beautiful Milford sound. Amazing views of the vally, we wound our way down to emerge from the trees into a pictureesc Milford Sound. Shortly after deboarding the bus, checking in at the counter and paying we were guided out onto the boat which would be our photo platform for the next few hours as we traveled the sound. Considerd the 8th wonder of the world by some and the most buitful place on earth by others your expectations are not let down, some of the most breathtaking scienery we have ever seen and our photos, as good as they are dont do it justice at capturing the true beauty of the area.
On our trip of the sound we encountered a yellow eyed penguin, just a single one hanging out on the rocks, the smaller boat we chose to go on (holds 75 people, had maybe 25 on it) got in close to the shore and all of the people on board took turns snaping some pictures of the well dresed bird. Heading out the mouth of the sound we passed a pod of Bottlenosed Dolfins. "A's" eyes, and face light up even more than they were already from seeing the penguin, the boat made a pass through the pod, turned around and passed through again, pretty cool the dolphins were a bit curious and played with the boat a bit. We headed out to the open ocean on the front of the sound and made our way in a big arc around back into and down the other side of the opening. On our way back in the Dolphins all of a sudden became really playful and surfed in the boats wake for a long time, we cought some relly cool pics hanging off the front of the boat. "A" was supper excited when she heard the dophins talking to each other and using there blowhols to shoot water up onto us taking pictures. It was really cool watching the dolphins turn sideways and make eye contact, you can really see the intelegince behind the eyes.
Having been all played out the dolphins turned off, and we made our way on back, we came accros a few fur seals bathing in the sun having a lazy afternoon nap. The boat pulled upto the highest permanent waterfall in the sound, A and I stayed out on the front deck and got soaked as the boat put the nose of the boat under the waterfall, we had a good laugh and headed inside untill we were clear of the fall. Meandering around the coast we made our way back to the dock and deborded the ship, everyone getting off the boat had a huge smile on there face. One of the guides on teh boat said it is very rare to see dolphins less than 8% of the time they go out and even more rare to see all three animals on one trip. We had a geoargus sunny day which is rare in Milford which is the wetest place on earth with an average rainfall of 27 feet a year. The busride back was fast and we were tired from all the fresh air, we had a good sleep and great memorys to take with us.
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