Between Tramps II

Yep, the bow is under the waterfall.

The Tasman Sea.

Dolphins. Really.

An albatross. Really.

Blue Sky.

Fur seals.

Cliffs of Insanity.

The camera may have gotten a bit wet under the falls.

I just noticed that Scott has red side burns.

We went to an underwater viewing center.

Pictures before they turned on the lights.

Pictures after they turned on the lights.

This white colored coral is actually called black coral and only grows in Milford Sound.

They say that they do not feed the fish, but this one looked like he was munching on a chicken bone.

Can you see the starfish?

The underwater viewing center was really awesome! Milford Sound is utterly unique because of the amount of rainfall it gets during the year (6 feet!). This creates a layer of fresh water on top of the ocean water. This leads to a unique situation where sea life that usually lives deeper down in the ocean now lives just under the layer of the fresh water. Such a cool ecosystem here!

And we got free tea.

The boat that picked us up was a lot less crowded.

On the way back to Te Anau from Milford Sound there was a cheeky Kea begging for food from the line of cars waiting to go through the tunnel. Keas are the world's only alpine parrot.

This is the only time Scott and I have ever actually seen one of these birds "in the wild".

I have to say, I do love these kind of shots. What a beautiful place to have a bathroom break.

Back in Te Anau we took a walk by the lake.

And went to the bird sanctuary. This is a native NZ wood pigeon or Kereru. They are HUGE birds and make a lot of noise when they take flight.

This is another NZ parrot called a Kaka.

This one appeared to be in the middle of an escape attempt. "Now is it righty tighty...?"

This little guy is a fantail. They often follow you along a trail through the woods and eat the bugs that you stir up. One even landed right on my pole once.

One of the trampers we met told us that a Frenchman that she met said that these were magic mushrooms but we didn't test that theory.

Back in Milford Sound we relaxed a bit spent one night in a swanky motel spa suite and had a lovely dinner at an Italian place in town which was just $50 for 2 dinners and 2 desserts. We then watched Goodbye Pork Pie in our room which is a very...um...interesting iconic NZ 70's movie. The next day we ran errands and did laundry and Scott bought me a new battery and memory stick for my camera. Yay! Then we were going to spend another leisurely night at the Te Anau Great Lakes Holiday Park. We played some checkers (which one game Scott beat me soundly and one game was a stalemate) and some Scrabble, but unfortunately it was at this point that I realized that I had forgotten about my boots and one pair of my socks which were still in the van and were still wet from the previous tramp! This solved the question as to why the camper van stunk. Anyways, since we were due to start our next tramp the following day, I tried to hand wash the shoes and socks as best I could and then we started a fire in the big fireplace in the lounge so that I could try to dry them out. This stressed me out quite a bit because I really needed them dry, but I didn't want to set them on fire, so I had to watch them carefully. This was made a bit unbearable by the children watching Hannah Montana after she decided to stop being Hannah Montana on the t.v. We also had to pack everything else up and get ready for our next tramping journey. I think that Scott made pasta for dinner that night in the community kitchen, and the next morning we were up and out around 9am to start our last tramp of the trip. The Kepler Track.