Milford Sound…and I discover everyone in New Zealand isn’t sweet and polite
Monday, January 15, 2024. Queenstown and other places.
I’m not a morning person, so waking up early to make the Milford Sound tour departure time of 6:30 a.m. was tough. I had a troubled sleep, worried I wouldn’t wake up.
Was it worth getting up pre-dawn to see this amazing sunrise? NO.
The pickup was only a few blocks away, right on the lake, and we were one of the first there and got good seats near the front of the bus. The driver was a real character who grew up just a few towns away. She had a bad cold and coughed and sneezed continuously, which was unfortunate for us, as despite the odds we hadn’t gotten sick yet on this trip, and for her (not sure why she had to work).
She was one of the few actual New Zealand natives we got to spend time with, albeit in a passive way. She was polite and friendly when she did the tour-company-mandated descriptions of major landmarks, but off mic she swore and complained about every driver on the road and told stories of the trouble she got into in high school.
The four-hour drive to the sound was beautiful. First, along the lake, then passing through pastureland with sheep and cows.
We had a rest stop at a gas station/cafe in Teanu. I was hungry and got a terrible savory pastry that I literally spat out, and ate peanut M&Ms instead. On the plus side there were llamas in a field next to the gas station and the cafe sold llama food. I bought a couple bags and shared with my fellow tourists.
Leaving Teanu, we entered the amazing Fiordland National park. Lush, with many different types of native plants, tall mountains, dramatic peaks, glaciers, rushing blue rivers, lakes, waterfalls. You’d need a car to explore it properly.
Why is the water always so beautiful? Okay, here it has an amazing frame.
We made several photo stops, but the driver had put the fear of god into us about getting back to the bus in ten minutes or less or she’d leave us and we all did believe her, so it was rushed. I wanted to spend more time in each place and hike around and take it all in.
All the white lines on that mountain are waterfalls
Our bus driver was skilled at parking the giant bus in areas with small turnouts and/or very little parking. Most of the view spots were very popular and we had to pass some by as they were full. In one instance we may have been sticking out into the road a bit and she muttered about recently having gotten a ticket for doing just this. I appreciated that she really wanted us to see the good stuff, even if she might get in trouble.
The road led to the end of a glacial valley and someone, somehow, got funding to drill a tunnel through to the other side–which connects to Milford Sound. The tunnel is only one lane so we had to wait for everyone heading east to exit before we got our turn. It was a legit, carved-out-of-rock tunnel, and long and dark and very satisfying.
We emerged at the dead end of another valley, with another breathtaking view. The road from there was steep, with crazy hairpin turns, and made even scarier thanks to our insane driver. I know she does this tour four times a week and knows the road, but we went way too fast.
After driving for hours through peaceful wilderness, it was a shock to arrive at the dock and find a jammed parking lot and a maelstrom of tourists waiting to depart on one of the four boats. The bus driver warned us about flies and she wasn’t kidding. They were small and nasty and everywhere. I dowsed myself in bug spray and that did the trick, though it also kept R. away as it’s extremely toxic.
Our boat
We waited in a long line to board, and because we’d purchased the optional buffet lunch, were immediately directed to another line. The food was as bad as I expected but there wasn’t an alternative. Also horrible were the Chinese tour groups. I’d gotten used to everyone being so polite here I was taken aback. They didn’t merely ignore the line to the buffet, they physically pushed people aside to get to the food, and did the same to claim tables. I began to wonder about the culture in China. Maybe it’s a free-for-all and there are no lines? A bit of internet research seems to confirm this. Thank you to reddit:
“The communist revolution in China really engrained the mentality that “you need to assert yourself to get anything” because the rampant famine during Mao’s rule really meant that if you didn’t fight to get to the front of the food lines, you and your family weren’t eating. You have to remember that the communist revolution was only ~60 years ago. There’s a whole generation of people that are still alive today that learned that being polite meant you weren’t getting any government controlled resources (food, medicine, etc.) because they were so scarce. That survival mentality got passed onto the next generation so it became the norm in mainland China’s society.“
I wolfed down my lunch–mainly scalloped potatoes–as the boat had cast off and the voyage through the sound had begun. The chill wind gave me the opportunity to finally wear the compact down jacket I’d bought specifically for this trip. And…I probably could have done without it. It took up 15% of my suitcase and I only wore it once. I had vague ideas I’d be hiking in the alps and that never happened.
To give you a sense of scale, the small white dot to the left of center is another tour boat
Insert two-plus hours of me gaping at nature and running from one side of the boat to the other.
Milford sound was much greener than I’d expected, given the mountains we’d seen on the way here were bare. I got Kauai vibes with the lush vegetation and waterfalls. The scale was hard to comprehend in a way the made it not as awesome as it should have been. Does that make sense? I felt like I was looking at something a couple hundred feet high that was very close to me – and then I’d see one of the other boats and it’d be a small speck and my mind would go oooooohhhhh.
The sound isn’t huge. We got to the sea pretty quickly.
The bus ride back was again beautiful. The two people in the very front seats took a plane back ($487 each!!) so the driver offered R. and I their seats. Looking through the front windshield (in what was to me the driver’s seat) was amazing and frightening. I was on the left side and we were driving on the left side of the road and I was pretty sure we were going off the cliff.
We spent a mellow evening at the hotel as our eyes were full and we were all traveled out. The changing light over the lake is always enough entertainment. I like it here.
Roadtripz and Other Journeys 