Sunday 2^nd. March.

 

Te Anau is a very cosmopolitan town purely built on local and international tourism. It is probably quite a bit smaller than the village of Hibaldstow in North Lincolnshire, but it has 2 banks, a couple of supermarkets, some largish posh shops, and loads of Hotels and Motels. It fronts onto the biggest lake in the South Island, and although just across the lake is a range of large hills or small mountains; Alpine like in that the lower ¾ are clad in the usual dense native forest, the top ¼ is rocky, and they are higher than Ben Nevis: all very relatively deceptive. However on 3 sides there is relatively low rolling countryside with a little agriculture in places.

 Forecast not good for my 3 night stay in Te Anau, but everyone says Milford Sound is spectacular in the rain: they get it 200 days a year: sometimes up to 600 ml. per day. So I set off at around 8.00 am for the 120 km. drive having booked a 2hour boat trip. I appear to be fairly lucky with the weather as I head north, and as I drive the rolling countryside to the East becomes progressively more hilly and the hills to the West progressively more mountainous, and I begin to get glimpses of further progress to come.

 

 

 

 

And this (below) is what you see as you wait at the green light for the Homer Tunnel at an altitude of 920 metres. This is your highest point. The tunnel then angles down fairly steeply, and you emerge at around 800 metres in a distance of 1 km. but having cut through a steep ridge, as high as Ben Nevis.

 

 You then wind back down through NZ temperate rain forest

 

to sea level.

 

 

Mitre Peak is the one on the left that I never saw a mile high above me in the clouds

 

 

 

Spectacular Glen Etive in steroids

  

By the end of the cruise