Day 13 Portobello (Otago Peninsula)

We woke up this morning to a couple lingering rain showers and leftover clouds. However it quickly cleared off and we had nearly perfectly clear skies all day at Milford Sound! It was a nice change from what we had seen yesterday.

We drove the few minutes down to the village of Milford which isn't really a village, but an airstrip, parking lot, coffee shop/visitor center and a harbor/terminal for all the boats doing cruises of the Sound. We did the two quick tracks and went into the visitor center for coffee and tea. One thing we noticed was there were hardly any souvenirs here, just a few postcards. Maybe because it's so far out of the way they just bring the essentials in?

We walked over to the harbor and checked in for our cruise. The terminal was relatively empty at this point, 10am. We waited around for our 1015 boarding and then got onto the Milford Wanderer. It was an old sail boat but quite nice all around. The skies stayed clear all day and we were amazed by the scenery and some of the biggest permanent waterfalls in New Zealand. A couple interesting things pointed out were that the Beech Trees were able to grow on such steep mountainsides by intermingling their root systems. Only about 30% of the trees actually had roots into the rock, during heavy rains or earthquakes an anchor tree could un-root and cause a tree avalanche into the ocean. The glacier that formed the Milford Fiord was thought to be around 1200 meters thick and moving at up to 7 meters per day. This was a very active glacier. Another impressive thing about this is not only are the cliffs coming out of the water tall, but they continue down around 300 meters. The moraine the glacier left near the Tasman Sea was about 250 meters tall so the ocean is only about 150 feet deep where the sound meets the sea vs the 900 feet in the sound.

We went a ways into the Tasman Sea because it was so pleasant out. There have been reports of 30 meter tall waves there, today there was just a few swells. As we turned around the guide announced that our first class tickets had just turned into economy. We found out what that meant a few seconds later when we turned into the wind. It was a very windy (and slightly wet) ride back into the Sound. Once in the sound the wind was more manageable. We arrived back at the harbor about 1245 which was now crowded and the large parking lot reserved for busses completely full. We timed our cruise perfectly.

We got back to the van and started our long drive to the Otago Peninsula near Dunedin. We enjoyed the views back to Te Anua since they were so obscured yesterday and stopped for gas and a couple breakfast groceries. Heather got to drive the majority of the way to Otago since it was pretty rural and straight. The views consisted of green rolling hills full of sheep, cows, perfectly manicured wind breaks and tree farms.

Upon arriving on the Otago peninsula we stopped for a quick dinner and then headed down to the tip of the peninsula for little blue penguin viewing! It was very cold and windy, but Chad got to wear his long underwear for the second time this trip! We hiked down to a viewing platform and they turned on some lights, which are supposedly supposed to mimic the moonlight. The penguins come ashore in "rafts" which consist of groups of penguins that all come in together. Tonight they were coming in in groups of about 10. Once reaching shore they have to scramble across some rocks and then find somewhere to sleep on the hillside. They are so clumsy, but all eventually made it. We saw 63-64 penguins in total, and left a little early cause it was cold! As a bonus we saw a couple albatrosses sailing around just before dark.

We arrived back at our very busy holiday park and collapsed into bed.Read more