NZ: Pristine landscapes

Friday 20.4: We woke up early to get some free breakfast, and I ate a huge bowl of cereal (my favorite breakfast here). Then we just walked around Queenstown looking for souvenirs for our families, friends and ourselves. I found Jake the Sheep - a cute pen case that looks like a sheep :) I also bought delicious ice cream from a place that makes their woffles themselves. We left Queenstown at around noon to drive to Te Anua, where we did some more souvenir shopping. I also found a bakery selling rye bread, but unfortunately they had ran out of it. We spent the evening watching the movie Autumn in New York at the hostel. They had a special room with seatings for watching TV and movies.

One more beautiful view

Our car, Denise and Mister Toiletpaper roll

A weindy road (most roads in NZ are like this)

Saturday 21.4: It was our earliest morning: We woke up at 5am to drive to Milford Sound for a river cruise. There were some cool lookouts along the drive; like Mirror Lake, which reflects the picture of the mountains in the water. It was especially beautiful in the dawn. Our cruise lasted for 2 hours and the boat was the smallest one of all the cruise lines. It was a good boat, though, and we were offered free coffee and tea. We spent most of the cruise time standing outside on the front deck, which was the best place to see the landscape. It was rather cold so my new beanie and mittens came in good use :) The boat cruised in the middle of really high, straight mountain walls, the highest of them being 1.6km! We also saw a waterfall, snow on top of the mountains and a seal (that went back to the water before Carla and Denise got their cameras out). We were again really lucky with the weather: It rains almost every day in Milford Sound but that day the sky was clear! The landscape was so pristine and impressive. After our cruise ended I bought a photograph that had been taken where we had been cruising. It´s safely packed and I won´t put it onto the wall until back in Finland.

Mirror Lake

Milford Sound on the cruise

A high waterfall

MSF

We drove to see Chasm, a waterfall that has shaped soft rock to form these cool holes. Then we drove for an hour to this walk that was supposed to be 45min-long (here people tend to measure distances as how long time it takes to walk/drive them). It took us only 15min to complete the loop, which was a bit of a dissappointment. It was nothing special anyways. We spent the rest of the day driving and got to Mount Cook when it was dark already. Mount Cook is the highest mountain, and also a little village next to it is called Mount Cook. There was no vacancy at the YHA hostel (that would´ve had a sauna) so we drove to this another place. The building was all dark and we became a bit suspicious. But we knocked the door of a private house next to it and got rooms from the building, which was a cabin of some alpine club. It was similar to our scout cabins: a huge common room with cooking facilities, a fireplace, tables and benches, and a computer with internet (which we don´t have in our scout cabins, of course). There were only 4 other people, who were all older than us. We decided to sleep in the common room instead of bedrooms, and carried matrises there. I made fire to the fireplace and kept adding wood to it during the night, as well. Despite of having the fire it was pretty cold. It was a different place from hostels, though, and I enjoyed sleeping there.

Chasm

Mount Cook