Dunedin, Milford Sound. Days 11-13 of the trip

January 31 (Day 11). As always, we got up early, packed, and set off. First we headed for the peninsula near Dunedin. I thought we would reach the far end quickly, but not at all. There were speed limits everywhere. It was the time when schoolchildren were heading to school, so the roads were full of police, and every now and then volunteers blocked traffic to let kids cross. We were driving toward some vague point. I thought there had to be something interesting somewhere at the tip of the peninsula. But I could not shake the feeling that there might be something even better elsewhere. Then I saw a road leading off toward the ocean, ignored the navigator, followed it, and as it turned out, that was the right move. There was a viewpoint there just a short walk from the parking lot, and you could also go down to the shore. Sheep were wandering around near the viewpoint. One of them got scared of us, started to run, fell onto its back, and spent quite a while flailing its legs, trying to get up. Eventually it managed, and, embarrassed in front of the other sheep, pretended it had not been afraid of us at all and was just strolling around.

We moved on. The road became very dangerous, almost impossible to pass oncoming cars, a narrow serpentine. I kept thinking about how we would drive back, because on the way there we were closer to the mountain, while on the way back we would be closer to the drop.

We reached the destination and there was nothing special there. We spotted a seal in the water, looked at the scenery, and drove back.

As it turned out, on the way back the navigator suggested a different route. It was less dangerous, but it followed the shoreline of the peninsula and kept twisting with the shape of the coast.

Then we drove to Dunedin's famous street. It is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the steepest street in the world. Its name is Baldwin Street.

We parked at the bottom and decided not to test our vehicle too hard, so we walked up. We got tired. Back at the car, I still decided to drive it. I put the automatic gearbox into first gear and we went up. At first it was fine, but near the top I started to doubt whether the car would make it, and the last meters were very slow. On the way back down I also kept it in first gear. I had thought going up would be the scary part, but going down was no less frightening. The engine could not really brake the car, so I had to use the foot brake a lot.

The weather was excellent, so we continued. Next on the route was Tunnel Beach. We arrived and barely found a place to park. Many spots were occupied by an ice cream truck, and in the end we tried the ice cream too. The path to the beach went downhill, so we reached it quickly.

Clouds were gathering, so we did not have much time, and we also wanted to cover as much distance as possible that day. After walking around the beach, we moved on.

For the rest of the day we mostly just drove nonstop, because the weather worsened and it started raining. On the road I booked a hotel through Booking or Hotels.com, and that became our destination. In general, places near Milford, such as Te Anau and Manapouri, turned out to be expensive. So I booked a place about 100 km before Te Anau, hoping that the next day we would pack quickly and make it to where we needed to be in the Te Anau valley. I also studied the weather for the following day and realized that we should go to Milford in the second half of the day, which meant we needed to use the first half well. So I booked a glowworm cave tour in Te Anau.

February 1 (Day 12). We woke up a bit earlier. That night we had stayed in something like a motel, not too expensive, about 3,000 RUB per night. But it had separate kitchen and bedroom areas. Apparently that town is not very popular, which is why a place of that class was not too expensive. In the end we arrived about 20 minutes before departure for the glowworm cave tour, went to check in for the cruise, and were told that it had been canceled. Then we translated the word they kept saying and realized the cave had been flooded after the rain. We got a refund and drove to Milford.

Back in 2015 I had probably been to Milford three or four times, I liked it that much. I had stayed in Manapouri then and drove there every day, trying to catch good weather. But this time we did not have that luxury, so we had to catch decent weather immediately, see everything, and move on. And that was more or less what happened. We got reasonably good conditions. It was raining somewhere, but you could simply drive away from it and forget about it. At the entrance to the Milford Sound road we noticed a lot of police cars stopping everyone. They stopped us too. Two guys started asking where we were from, where we had rented the car, and whether we knew the traffic rules. Interestingly, they asked about the rules only after hearing where we had picked up the car. So technically, we could have rented a car in Auckland, driven 3,000 km across the country including the ferry, and still not known how to drive it or what the rules were. They had some signs there, like keep left and so on. I knew all that. They also said we were the first Russians they had seen on that road.

We drove on. I kept seeing landscapes I already knew, but I still stopped to take more photos. My camera had a different lens this time, a wider one than on my first trip, so I could capture much more of the scenery.

We reached Milford Sound and took photos of everything. Then we considered taking a boat trip, but the weather was getting worse, so we decided not to. It was expensive, and besides, I had already done it once in bad weather.

Then it started raining, and what was most surprising was that we got into the car, drove 5 km, and there was sunshine with no sign of rain at all. So we started walking around the locations beyond Milford Sound.

We passed through Homer Tunnel and stopped there to rest and look at the views. We saw three parrots, and in the end they landed on our car while a crowd of tourists started photographing them.

Then we reached a trail that the devil himself must have pushed me to take. We started walking, but since evening was already approaching, we had to move fast. And it was uphill, so we got seriously tired climbing. In the end we gained a decent amount of height, and the whole point was to see this mountain lake from afar. I think it is called Lake Marian:

The view from there was also magnificent:

We came back down. There was very little time left before check-in closed at our cabin, so we hurried on. Along the way I took a few more photos similar to the ones I had made two years earlier.

We made it to the cabin in time, went through our usual evening routine, and prepared for the next day. It looked like another cold night ahead. The cabin had a heater, but it did not help. It ran all night, and we still ended up freezing. This was a Holiday Park in Mossburn, and their special feature was that peacocks wandered around the grounds.

This was the first and last time in New Zealand that we did laundry. But by then we already knew what a washer and a drier were, so first we washed our things and then dried them. It still took a lot of time. We waited ages for the wash cycle to end and then waited ages again for the clothes to dry.

February 2 (Day 13). We got up early, packed, ate, and drove on. The weather was not rainy, but it was overcast, so the first half of the day did not offer many especially beautiful views. I even dropped one marked point because it was most likely buried in clouds.

Every road we drove that day was one I had already driven two years earlier. But as usual, we still found something new. For example, we stopped at a beautiful round lake:

And places I had once visited before:

In the evening we checked into an unusual triangular cabin with a high ceiling. It was warm and cozy. It had almost everything we needed. We decided to stay there for two nights, rest a little, and drive around Lake Wanaka, which that day we had rushed past because of the bad weather.

I did not buy internet at that hotel. They gave me a voucher for 20 MB for free, but it only worked in the cafe, and that was where I used it to send messages saying that we were alive.