To Fiordland
From Mount Cook to Queenstown to Milford Sound
Today we have a long drive ahead of us. We want to reach Fiordland, the national park and World Heritage area in the south west of the South Island. The magnificent mountain ranges we're driving through make us feel a little claustrophobic at times. There's just one road, and it leads us through deep valleys towards Queenstown. We wish we'd be driving on top of these mountain ranges instead, but we have to wait a couple of days for that...
Queenstown, the "adventure capital of the world" as it is known, is everything we expected it to be, and that's not very much. It's a crowded place, with helicopters, jet boats, booming music and of course packs of tourists nervously peeking over the edge of a very tall bridge with an elastic cord wrapped around their ankles... Most people just freeze, ignoring the "three two one GO" enthousiastically shouted at them by the bungie jump staff. It takes a couple of "three two one GO"-s to persuade the victims to actually do what they were here for in the first place: to jump off the platform, screaming in panic, and then dangle about for a bit at the end of the cord before being pulled into an inflatable raft by other bungie jump staff. It's funny to watch, but I'd rather jump from an airplane and feel free like a bird for a couple of minutes than hang upside-down from a bit of string with loose change falling out of my pocket. But to each his own, you might even be right in thinking that I'm just too much of a wuss to go bungie jumping.
We continue our trip and reach Te Anau. From there, we take the road that leads to Milford Sound. Beautiful! We camp somewhere halfway, at a DoC-site called Cascade Creek.
