Riverton to Milford

 Dear all

Today we awoke to a beautiful blue sky and hoped it would last to Milford our next stop in our move up the West Coast. The slow paced town of Riverton was one of the first European settlements dating from the sealing and whaling days. It was a lovely quiet place to break the journey and I couldn't abide another night in Invercargill (Very overpriced). The beach is pleasant enough, but is very flat. Our first stop on today's road trip was the pretty Te Waewae Bay where the very cute Monkey Island is accessible from the beach at low tide. This was a used as a Maori Whale lookout  and gave us our first glimpse (albeit hazy) of the great Fiordland. A little further along the road we stopped to admire the Clifden Suspension Bridge, which was built in 1899, but has now been replaced by a more modern version.   The first of the Fiordland towns we passed through was Manapouri, which appeared to us to just be a hosting point for tourists going out to Doubtful Sound and local tramps. It is sited right by the very beautiful Lake Manapouri and is surrounded by mountains and apart from that its only claim to fame is that it was the location of the very first mass environmental campaign to stop a massive hydro electric dam, which would have raised the water levels of the lake by 100 feet. Luckily over 265,000 signatures changed political hearts and minds as well as a number of local government officials jobs! We had a short look around and ducked down to the very cute Fraser's each which had loads of lupins flowering there.

Twenty kilometres from Manapouri is Te Anau which surprisingly sits just on the edge of Lake Te Anau, New Zealands second largest lake. Given we were a little behind schedule we basically zoomed through and vowed to call in on our journey back the following day.  The famous 119km road from here to Milford Sound is probably as famous in its own right as the final destination. The first part of the road rolls through farmland created from the moraine of a glacier that created Lake Te Anau after about 29km road passes Te Anau Downs  the start of the Milford Track and you pass into the Fiordland  National Park and we really started to get excited (we were here at last!) We stopped at a few of the signposted lookouts down the Eglington Valley floor and also stopped at the very pretty Mirror lakes, which yielded very photogenic reflected views of the mountains nearby and gave me my first taste of sandflys the scourge of the region. As the weather was faultless we had an amazing view right down towards the Southern Alps

We had to cross the Alps and this  was at the very aptly named Divide! This is the lowest East- West pass in Southern Alps, but trust me our poor little camper van moaned and groaned all the way up the ribbon wooded hillside. We had a little stop half way for some photos and met our first Kea - a very cheeky alpine parrot!  Eventually we reached the car park just before the Homer Tunnel and stopped to admire the fantastically  beautiful high walled mountains around us and the Kea who were sitting on every ones cars creating mayhem!  We decided to stretch our legs and take the alpine walk up towards a beautiful waterfall not too far from where we had parked, the  walk was only 20 Min's long and when we got to the end of it we decided to walk up to the waterfall as it only looked about 30 Min's away. Well we walked and walked over the glacial moraine (which is very hard on the legs!)and eventually reached the snow line just below the falls & looked back to see our van down the slopes looking like a pin prick - Whoops.  We eventually arrived back at the van some 3 hours after we had left - Double whoops!! We quickly dived through the tunnel which started construction during the depression in 1935 and was finally finished in 1953! It is 1.2km long and in most places is only suitable for one line of traffic. Unfortunately we had missed the traffic lights system and were now having to wing it!! Holding our breathe all the way through only served to exaggerate the exhalations  we made at the other end as we emerged into the magnificent Cleddau Canyon and you slowly wind you way back down the valley to our campsite just outside Milford itself. It was late when we got there and we literally had time for some food before we hit the sack.

Another exciting day tomorrow................

Hoping for a continuation of the great weather.

Nite

Sara