THURSDAY IN QUEENSTOWN

Milford Sound

      Today was yet again, another early morning. Today we woke up and met the group down at the bottom of the base. Today we were headed down to Milford sound. Now Milford sound is where they shot some of the Lord of the Rings, Avatar, and Jurassic Park. It also is just absolutely incredible. This morning it was kind of rainy. It hadn't started to rain, but you could tell the rains were coming. This made it for an incredible experience. 

       The drive there was about four hours. This was a really long drive. Thank goodness we were all tired and were able to sleep most of the way. Once we woke up though, the drive was beautiful. There were about two huge waterfalls, and they were very pretty, and just tons of trees and plants. It was gorgeous! Once we made it there, we had a little day cruise scheduled! We loaded the boat, and then we started going into the Tasman Sea. This was absolutely incredible. There were beautiful waterfalls, and the thing that was most incredible to me was how the mountains went straight into the sea. There was no little beach area or anything, it was just straight into the water!

                While we were on the boat, it started to get kind of hazy, it was looking more like rain. This made a very mysterious atmosphere. It was almost as if you were transported back into Jurassic Park. It seriously felt like a pterodactyl should just swoop down! I felt like I should see dinosaurs eating the leaves of the tress on the mountains, or like I should see blue avatar people running around. As you look out into the sea, you felt like you should see Legolas, Frodo, and Aragon in their little canone going off to destroy the ring! It was really a beautiful scenery.

 
(It was really windy haha)

         While we were on the boat, we got to see a sea lion. Sitting up on one of the smaller mountains, was a little sea lion. This was really cool. We were with in about 25 feet of it. We got to sit and watch if for a while as well. That was really fun.

          After we had made our loop out in the Tasman Sea, we came back and we got to go the underwater observatory. This is an incredible place. Here they have a separation of salt water and fresh water. You can see the separation of the fresh water sitting on top of the salt water about ten meters in. This was incredible. After that you get to go down, and you get to see marine life that usually cannot be viewed because it is so far under the ocean water. This was really neat!

          We spent a little while there, and then we had to get back on the boat to take us back to the shore. Now by the time we had come out of the under water observatory, it was pouring rain! It was HUGE rain drops! We ran to the boat and went in the covered area. We started talking to the person driving the boat, and said how can you even see where we are going. He respond you can't. Now that was scary! No worries though, we made it back safe!

 

          We got back to our vans, and started our four hour drive back. This was the most amazing ride I have ever had in my life! Where we were, when it rains the mountains turn into having thousands of waterfalls. This is something very few people get to see (It has to be raining.) We started driving back, and we saw HUGE water falls. About every twenty feet for about two hours straight there was HUGE waterfalls. I was in awe! They were waterfalls that were not there when we came through the first time! It was incredible. I'm not even joking when I say every twenty feet there was a waterfall. These aren't just little Utah waterfalls that you hike to, but they are gigantic ones that you only see in the movie! This was truly amazing!

        Anyway, we made it back to base, and tonight we decided to go hang out on the shore of the lake. This was so calming and relaxing. It's really amazing, the lifestyle over here isn't go, go, go, rather it's very relaxing and enjoy every minute of it. This was a really nice little break! After that, we went back to base and head to bed for the next big day!!!