I'm more of a hunter gatherer than a navigator

On our way to Queenstown we made a quick stop at Fox Glacier. Riley was a little "glaciered" out...or maybe it was the pouring rain so Lukas and I changed into our swim trunks and rain jackets and decided to sprint to the glacier. We hopped the barriers and only made it 30 feet before we ran into a guide who told us that the trail was closed due to mud/rock slides further up in the valley. Riley was waiting in the van with the video camera to catch our return, soaked to the bone. We changed back into our dry clothes and continued our drive to Queenstown. That night we went out for a delicious sushi dinner and we ate ourselves sick. We walked the town and Riley found a place that had jugs of "Pimms", which is a tasty liquor with soda and fresh fruit. The funny thing is for the last few months Riley has been asking every bar and lounge that we go to if they had pimms. I was starting to think it didn't exist..haha...
The next day was beautiful and we went straight for the patio where we had seen the pimms jugs the night before. After a few beers, nachos and a jug of pimms we hit the town again. Along the wharf of lake wakatipu there was an underwater observatory where you could see diving ducks, gigantic rainbow trout and one of the biggest eels ever seen...now with sharks in the ocean and eels in the freshwater Riley will never set foot in water again.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in a park keeping up our friz skills (including tip drill) so no return tryouts required.
We had our last supper with Lukas, played some crib and hit the town for a few more drinks. We stopped by one pub that had a live band but the highlight of the night was sitting beside a couple that were so drunk and hot and horny for each other that they must have thought they were in the privacy of their own home. Everyone is the pub was watching, laughing and taking pictures.....priceless!

The next morning we drove towards Milford Sound and stopped and camped at a quiet little campground right on the shore of one of NZ's biggest lakes.

The next day we got up early to beat the traffic along the remaining portion of the drive to Milford Sound. The drive the sound is about 110 km from the nearest town but since the terrain is so mountainous it takes around 2.5 hrs to drive. As we entered the mountains the cliffs around us started to get steep. The entire valley had been carved out by a valley glacier and not much erosion has taken place which has resulted in some pretty dramatic landscape. It had rained throughout the past night so there were literally hundreds of tiny waterfalls cascading down the rock faces. Milford Sound gets approximately 7-9 m of rain per year and it hadn't rained there in 6 days....which they called a drought.

As the sound is one of NZ's number one attractions we were a little surprised to see how non-commercialized everything was. I said to rye that i was surprised that no one has built a chateau lake Louise like hotel along the lake edge. There is an older motel and a small cafe. One of the main things to do at the sound is go for a ferry cruise around the fjord and since it was still raining we couldn't decide if it would be worth it. In the end we decided to take the 2 hr cruise which took you along the entire sound and out to the Tasman Sea. It was amazing to see how steep and high the mountains around the fjord actually were once you were
sitting right below them in a boat.

We spent the remainder of the day traveling south along the scenic highway towards the southeast coast to meet up with Riley's relatives. We stopped in a little fishing town called Riverton for the night and found the best little campsite run by an older woman. It seemed as though she had converter an old community hall along with kitchen and bathrooms in to a campground. There was even a log fire place and ping pong table....and a TV! We were making dinner and decided to turn on the tv just as the survivor finale was starting, which was funny because on more than a couple of occasions we had wondered how some of our favorite shows had played out....errr not that we were hooked on surviver or anything (so 1998 we know).

The next morning we hit the road to finish up the last couple hundreds to Kaka Point where we will be spending a couple of days with some of Riley's relatives on her mom's side (Jocelyn and Nelson). On a side note i should mention that Riley is one hell of a city navigator (don't tell her i said that)and on this day i had taken my normal spot behind the wheel and riley had fallen a sleep. Well i got into the city of Invercargill and had to take a sort of bypass to get to the scenic route and before long i was a little lost. Being a man it would seem absurd to stop and ask for directions when i have perfectly good map sitting beside me and a male's natural born navigation skills. Riley woke up checked the map and informed me that we were heading north instead of east....hahaha. She is good at city navigating and i am good at outdoor navigating so we make a good team. On the way we stopped off at the most southern point of the south island for a token tourist photo. We were only 4000 km from south pole!...i know it still seems like a lot but it might be the closest that we ever get to it in our lifetime. The wind really howls when it blows from the Antarctic so we didn't spend too much time posing.

After our last stop we picked up a Mrs. Mac's steak and cheese pie and finished the drive to Kaka Point. We are both really looking forward to relaxing in something other than a communal area of a campground and best of all a comfy bed!