Milford Track

(Pictured: K & A overlooking Lake Te Anau from the Milford Track)

Hello all, your comments are very funny. Annie, I hope you can get your account straightened out - and if you can't, I'm still happy to see you on as "anonymous". Rhonda, they do drive on the left, and Kane is a pro now. It's actually not that hard to get used to, and I find that the one thing I get confused about is which way we are turning. To explain: when I, as the navigator, tell Kane to take a left turn, sometimes I find that I actually meant to take a right. I'm not one of those people that doesn't know left from right (although I do mix up the colors pink and yellow, a whole other story), but I have found that I seem to associate the direction of the turn just as much with whether or not you cross traffic as I do with the actual direction of the turn. What I mean is, does the turn require driving across cross traffic, or can you just turn onto the adjacent street? In that respect, a left turn is similar to a right turn in the U.S.; you can turn left on a red light because you don't have to cross oncoming traffic. Anyway, I was surprised to find this association in my brain, and I'm trying to work it out.

And as for the 8-person bunks, they were interesting, but not too bad. We had a pretty good group both nights and the only really crappy part was that the bunks were very creaky and quite rickety. And no one set of bunks were available when we got there, so Kane and I were each on the top bunk of two separate bunks with strangers underneath us. Kane complained that the guy below him on the second night seemed to be doing some sort of earthquake simulation (which can be easily caused by simply rolling over in these janky bunks) which was bothersome to him. Other than that, we dealt with the nighttime toots, bad breath, and the bustling starting at 7am. I know, sounds like hell, but it really wasn't. We do prefer the rooms to ourselves, but not much you can do when they're full and we're cheap. We have bunks a couple of other nights, hopefully those will go smoothly also.

The following night in Dunedin was excellent accommodation. The YHA there is a converted old house. And I do mean old and I do mean converted. The remodel on this place must have been heinous. So many rooms tacked on, doorways blocked, stairways crammed in, low ceilings, short doors, converted basement areas, winding passageways, etc, etc. It was sort of like the Winchester Mystery House - I liked it a lot. We got a room with a double bed and a view of the city which was sweet. Last night and tonight we are in a very small room with two twin beds in Te Anau. Which brings me to the title of this posting, which apparently will not be the majority of my writing...

We hiked the Milford Track today on a guided tour. The Milford Track is known for being one of the most beautiful hikes in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford_Track. You begin with an hour boat ride (on a sweet boat that can hold like 60 people) up Lake Te Anau to the start of the trail. The full hike is 54 kilometers (about 40 miles) and takes 4 days/3 nights, though we just walked the first 5.5 kilometers and back today. It was very flat, very well maintained and very pretty. They provided a nice lunch, and all in all it was very nice. Rhonda, you would love it; we imagined you ooohing and aaahing. We didn't see much wildlife up there, but one fact we did learn is that there are no land mammals native to NZ, so all the native birds are very curious and friendly because they have no natural predators. So, a little bird walked all the way up to our group and almost hopped on my foot to say hi. It was adorable, not even scared by our talking. I wished we had seen more, but I guess the introduction of land mammals by other cultures has really messed up the native wildlife here. They're trying to fix it. Anyway, the bird was cute (I wanted to pet it).

I did get to pet the calico that roams the parking lot - yeay, kitties!

Tomorrow we're off to our boat cruise (I use the word "cruise" lightly) around Milford Sound. More later, keep commenting friends and fams!