On this particular day, after having a couple days with a good amount of driving I wanted to do some walking and hiking. After doing a bit of research on some hikes that could be done relatively close to where I was, I decided to start with the Twelve Mile walking track, which also connected to the Bobs Cove walking track . It was close to Queenstown on the road going out to Glenorchy. Initially I wanted to start at the Bobs Cove end of the hike, but the parking area was very small, and there were no available spaces, so I went back to the Twelve Mile area, which it turned out had a giant parking area, and there was pretty much no one there. The walk takes you along a peninsula, and you go in and out of the forest along the lakeshore. In the Twelve Mile area there were also a couple of locations that were used in the Lord of the Rings movies. One spot along the river was where Sam was cooking the rabbit, and the camping area of Twelve Mile was also apparently used for Ithilien. That wasn't really the point of going, but interesting nonetheless. After a while this hike took a sharp turn uphill, and I was able to get an amazing view on top of the end of the peninsula looking down on either side of it to see both sides of the lake.
This is how it started out...
This is the spot where they were cooking that rabbit....
Stopped here for a snack....
So pretty!
This was also an old mining area, and this is an old hut related to that....
Looking down at the peninsula
Bobs Cove...
The view from the "picnic point" at the top end of the peninsula
After finishing that hike, I decided I wasn't finished walking for the day, and I headed to the other side of the river to do the hike to Jack's Point. Most of the people on this particular trail were on bicycles, so I spent a lot of time getting out of their way. This hike also went along the shore of Lake Wakapitu (although it was relatively high above the lake itself). It was on the opposite side of the lake from where I had been staying.
On New Years Eve, I took a tour out to Milford Sound. It is a fjord area that is extremely famous for its views. I decided to take a tour instead of driving out myself because I wanted the freedom to be able to take pictures and I had heard that the drive to get there could be a little bit difficult. (After taking the bus, for the most part the drive was totally fine, but once you got closer, there was a tunnel that was one lane only, so you had to wait for quite a while before going through, and beyond that the roads were very narrow and winding, so with all the buses going through there it might have indeed been a bit difficult).
But, I'm getting ahead of myself. There are many companies that you can choose from to go out to Milford Sound, many of them providing various packages for the bus, boat ride and helicopter or small plane rides. I chose to take the bus (which had windows in the roof...this made more sense once you actually get closer to Milford Sound) with a company called Real Journeys, which is apparently family owned and one of the oldest companies in Queenstown area (more info from the older gentleman I met). I was actually really pleased with this company. Before the tour, I had sent them an email asking if there was any way to reserve a window seat because I was a single traveller and I would likely want to take photos on the drive, and might be disappointed if I couldn't do so. They informed me it wasn't possible, BUT...when I got on the bus on the day of the tour, I found that they had reserved a seat for me next to a window right behind the "premium" seats. Lesson learned: it never hurts to ask, you might be surprised!
On the drive to get to Milford Sound, our driver gave us commentary along the way about the history, geography and other interesting facts about the areas we were driving through. We also made a few photo stops along the way, as well as a coffee/snack break at a cafe in Te Anau.
As I mentioned above there was one long tunnel we had to go through, but before going through it, we also got out to take in the mountains, and it is really hard to describe how incredible it was. None of my videos or photo could do it justice. In this area, it was really easy to tell why the tour companies put windows in the roof of the bus. Because the mountains were up to 1500m tall (about 5000ft) it wasn't possible to see just by looking out the normal windows. Getting out was even better though. Our driver pointed out a saddle area on the mountains that one of the first explorers was said to have climbed up over to find out what was on the other side. It was kind of hard to imagine climbing up that high.
Trying to use the bus as scale, but it still doesn't really give a good idea of how TALL these were
Trying to give a better image, but still doesn't show it quite as it was.
When we arrived at Milford Sound itself, there were blue skies, but looking out into the fjords, there were some very low clouds which wasn't great but they said the views are nice in the rain, and the rain actually means you can see more waterfalls from the boat so I wasn't too worried.
**⚠️ Warning: Lots of pictures from here...**
Unfortunately, after getting on the boat, once we entered the pass through the fjords, after about 10 minutes we basically went right into a cloud, got completely soaked, and weren't really able to see much of anything at all. That was a bit disappointing. The boat got to the end point and turned to go back and we were still in the cloud.
And...this was about all we could see
Not so happy about being wet...
If the boat got close enough, you could see a bit
Finally clearing that rain!!
But, finally, just before getting back, we cleared the cloud and were able to see a few waterfalls and some seals that were hanging out on the rocks.
