For the Love of Baby Blue...

Alex's trip to Milford Sound

Milford Sound

March 25, 2007

Much has happened since my last blog.  I’ve been going to classes for several weeks now, getting into the routine needed for maximum information absorption.  However, to keep from going crazy, I decided that trips outside of Dunedin were needed.  Don’t get me wrong, Dunedin is great, but I came here to see the country, right?  I’ve just gotten over my respiratory infection, thanks to the free healthcare and some weapons-grade antibiotics; it only took 3 weeks.

            After being stuck in my house for the first month I figured that I needed to see the rest of New Zealand, and NOW.  Luckily, I had already bought a car with my girlfriend, Amanda, and another girl named Greer we had met in Dunedin.

            The car’s a beauty. She’s a Toyota Carib, a manual, and is a deep blue color which led to her name, “Baby Blue.”  We call her B.B. for short.

            This past weekend we decided to go on a road trip.  We chose to go to Milford Sound , which is on the West coast of the South Island.  Dunedin is on the East coast, and about 5 hours away.  We figured we could drive to Te Anau , the closest town to Milford Sound, and sleep in the car for the night before heading the rest of the way to the Sound.  We left at 1:00 in the afternoon on Friday.

            The trip to Te Anau was beautiful.  The landscape was filled with farmland, sheep, rolling hills, and more sheep.  I would have to say that driving across New Zealand was one of the more pleasant road trips I have experienced.  For one, you’re never more than an hour away from a town, and each town has very clean restroom facilities.  What more could you ask for?  So we headed down through the Presidential Highway (It is named so because there are two towns, Clinton and Gore, which are within an hour of one another.), picked up a few hitchhikers, and made it to Te Anau by 5 pm.

            After walking around the town for a while we decided to head down the Milford Road a little bit longer to find a place to park for the night.  The Milford road is the road connecting Te Anau to Milford sound, and it takes about 2.5 hours to reach the Sound from Te Anau. There are camping spots all up and down the road, so after an hour we found a camping site with a toilet and set up camp, which involved pushing the back seats forward and sleeping in the trunk (Luckily B.B. is a hatchback).

            We discovered that sleeping in the back of B.B. is probably one of the most uncomfortable things a person can do.  With three people in the back it felt like an earthquake every time someone turned over.  During this discovery, I reached up to turn out the flashlight.  One of the girls said, “Wait, turn it back on, I need to find something.” So I turned it back on.  And found a huge spider crawling up my arm. Now, I’m not usually afraid of spiders, but it was a surprise, and when I say it was a big spider, I mean BIG. We’re talking Aragog from Harry Potter big.  The first thing that went through my mind was, “There is only one type of poisonous spider in New Zealand.”  Then, the second thing was, “I hope this isn’t that one type.”

            Meanwhile, The first thing that came out of my mouth was “AAAAIIIIEEEE!! Openthedooropenthedooropenthedoor!” And the second thing that I said, as the spider began to slowly crawl up to my neck, was “Someone please get this off me.  Please. Hurry. Please? Openthedooropenthedooropenthedoor.”

            Well, the door opened, and I brushed it off my arm.  I’m pretty sure I saw it eat a sheep.

            With that experience to wish us goodnight, we muscled through the night, got maybe an hour of sleep, then got up in the morning to finish the journey to Milford. 

            We only made it 20 minutes down the road when we realized that something was wrong with Baby Blue.  We couldn’t get over 40 kilometers an hour, and she started pulling to the right and swerving all over the place. We decided to pull over before we swerved into oncoming traffic.  We figured that we were a few kilometres from Te Anau Downs, a small backpackers area with a motel and Bed and Breakfast.  Since we didn’t have cell phone service, we had to hitchhike to the Downs and call a towing service when we got there. We had been within an hour from reaching Milford Sound.

            Hitchhiking was harder than we thought it would be.  Greer stayed with the car while Amanda and I started walking south towards Te Anau Downs.  No one picked us up for over an hour while we walked. Let me tell you why.

            It takes about 2.5 hours to get to Milford Sound from Te Anau.  The majority of travellers going to Milford leave in the morning from Te Anau, stay in Milford Sound to go on a cruise or a day hike, then come back to Te Anau in the evening.  Very few people stay overnight to come back in the morning.  In our case, very few people came back in the morning in a pick-up-the-hitchhikers mood.

            So Amanda and I walked for over an hour, and we saw four cars pass us.  Four in an hour.  Luckily for us, the fifth car we saw had a soft spot for stranded travellers and drove us to Te Anau Downs.

            We called a tow service, and an hour later picked up Greer and Baby Blue. Mark, the tow truck driver, was a very helpful and pleasant tow truck operator. And as he got BB onto the towing trailer he very helpfully and pleasantly asked us, “Did you know you were in four wheel drive?”

            You’ve got to be kidding me.

So we went back to Te Anau and threw new tires on Baby Blue.  At this point it was only noon, so we all decided to go to Milford Sound no matter what else happened.

            As you can imagine, spirits weren’t too high inside Baby Blue.  We all were in bad moods from lack of sleep, our bad luck, knowing how inept with cars we are, etc.  However, the second we laid eyes on the Fiordlands we lost all of our worries.

            The sights coming up to Milford Sound were breathtaking.  All of the shapes of the mountains and valleys had been carved out by glaciers for thousands of years and gave shape to the landscape of Milford Sound.  Hundreds of waterfalls streaked over nearly vertical cliff faces and into the blue waters of the Sound.  Seals slept on rocky outcroppings and the sun broke through the clouds to light up trees holding onto bare rock.

We completely forgot our ordeal from the morning, and on our way back to Te Anau we were all smiles.

            It was definitely worth it.