Nov 24 - Milford Sound Bus and Boat

8 AM comes depressingly early when you're out drinking until 2 AM, but you only live once I suppose, so 8 o'clock is when we boarded the bus to Milford Sound. It was a 300 KM bus trip from Queenstown but the road was so zig-zaggy that it took much longer than a 300 KM Saskatchewan road trip. The drive was beautiful, past huge lakes and spectacular mountains. Unfortunately, due to the long bus ride, we had to take tons of stops for bathroom breaks, food and photos. After 5 hours we arrived at the Milford Sound harbour and boarded a big yacht-ish boat. It took us on a 2 hour cruise through the fjords of Milford Sound, which was very picturesque and we were taken right up next to a massive waterfall. As nice as it was though, it was like a weak version of the Whitsunday Islands, or like a more mountainous version of Bay of Islands or Abel Tasman National Park. Among the highlights of the cruise was our delicious sandwiches we made today and me discovering it was, in fact, possible to eat a whole apple, core and all. Sarah also demonstrated the odd way she eats kiwis, which is just like a pear, with the skin and all. Fruit lessons, hooray! Then came the 5 hour bus ride back to Queenstown which was agonizing, but we got to watch the movie The World's Fastest Indian, which was about a Kiwi guy who broke the land speed record on his motorcycle.

Back in Queenstown we went to a couple bars we had gone to last night to look for Sarah's wallet, which she discovered she had lost and luckily it was at the second place we tried, with all her money and cards intact. So now it was time for food and because we didn't have supper groceries purchased (only breakfast and lunch stuff) we opted for a restaurant. We picked a Mexican place that appeared to have reasonable multi-person meals in the $30 range. Headed in and it was a very cool atmosphere. Checked out the menus while Sarah called Visa to let them know she had found her wallet (she called them in the morning to get them to put a hold on her stuff) and B and I discovered that the combo meals were like $30 per person. Ouch. So we sucked it up and both ordered a $26 burrito, remarking that it had better be the best damn burrito we've ever tasted. Sarah learned that RBC had cancelled her credit card and her debit card wasn't working either, so she left to go sort that stuff out. We ate our millionaire burritos, which were adequate but nothing special, tossed our money on the table and went back to the hostel. Watched some TV and called it a night. Tomorrow we get to sleep in (hooray!) and might try luge down a hill track (which is actually like go-carts without motors) and hopefully some shinny at the indoor ice rink!