would you recognise a hobbit, if you met one?

Please excuse any spelling mistakes this HYPERLINK "mailto:f@" \l "$%" f@#$%^ PC is from the 90ies and so slow I don't see what I am writing.... I should have taken my macbook!!!

Oh my god, what a trip it had been. 

We started of pretty smooth here in Te Anau back to Milford Sound. Trip takes about two hours on a scenic quite spectacular winding road. Well, we always stop at really breathtaking scenery and after ohhhing about it go on! That' s our thing, so let it go!! ;-) Anke drove like for the first hour and then we changed. It already began to get dark, well, actually here it' s like ppuuuffff somebody switched the light out. So, I was driving and the road was ok, when it started to rain and wind and fog. Then it rained really hard and the windshield whiper isn' t working at all ... of course!!! The roads starts picking up and got really steep. Oh, how mysterious this is... spooky, we like it! :-) Then after 15 minutes it wasn' t that funny anymore, because we still had an hour to go and it didn' t get any better. One couldn't see a thing, all fog or clouds or what that was. Of course, we were the only car on that freaking road... it got quite quiet inside our car, let me tell you! I followed the middle line, just to be safe, didn't want to run us down the shoulder or anything. To make things worse, Anke happily discovered that there wasn] t any mobile receiption anymore... so, there we are all alone on this freaktrip and no we would not even get in touch with anyone ..... luckily the one and only hostel up there had our bed bookings. It sounds not that bad, but one should have been there... it was really spooky. Then after a steep turn the road went into a tunnel... not a "normal" tunnel of course, hey we are in Kiwi-land, nothing is normal.

So this tunnel, was out of the 1950s, I guess (the road to the Sound was built in the 90ies so don' t you all wonder)... pitch black .. no we don' t need lights at all, we have our own, right? *ha ha ha* It went to a one lane road and it wouldn' t end.... it was creepy.... ! After the tunnel the road didn' t get any better, the trees started hanging in the road. Basically, we were quite freaked out, when we' d finally would arrive in this lost world of this lonely planet... it resembled a scene of Jurassic Park meets Lord of the Rings! If we'd seen a hobbit standing there on the side of the road... hitch hiking, wouldn' t have surprised us at all.... seriously.... 
Well, after 2 hours of highway .. well, track to hell.... we arrived at the hostel and it poured down like crazy. 

At 11 pm the lights were switched of at the hostel ... well, the generator was cut off, only security lights... what a cosy place it was. For real, it was really a neat place, with big sofas and a lot of backpackers.... 

During the night the storm picked up and got worse, so in the morning, it felt like during the middle of a hurricane... we were like, ok, now we are stranded in the middle of nowhere because we can' t go on the boat onto the Milford Sound... !

We caught the boat at 10am and it was quite stormy and still raining, but with raincoats and a good humor, it worked. Actually it was magnificant... the Fiordland is awesome, it looked really ... again, like out of a movie set, the mountain tops were hidden by the clouds and the water was bottle green. Really mysterious.... The sun came out in the end again and it changed the whole scenery... quite astonishing.... we didn' t get to see dolphins, but sea lions.... ok, we can live with that, we'll be swimming with the dolphins anyways, later on!! whoo hooo!

That was it from the Milford Sound, now we are heading back to Queenstown and then off to the Franz Josef Glacier to the Westcoast of NZ....

the next jamie olivers

Us staying at the sheep station ... yep, indeed. :-) 

We met this guy from LA there .. Sam aka Borat ... he was staying there already for 1 1\2 yrs.. working and entertaining the backpackers, we guess. We were sitting on the porch with Sam and a couple from Beligum (our age, quit their jobs and travel around NZ for a year ... awesome) having some drinks and chatting. In the kitchen these two German guys aka mama' s babies were preparing their dinner ... like for 1 hour they neatly chopped vegetables, chopped cheese into tiny bits and pieces, cooked pasta and the likes and made themselves a big pot of pasta caserole! We had the times of our lives watching them acting like Jamie Oliver on speed, that was like a dinner show live. Sam then also filmed them with his camera and we watched the director' s cut on fast forward later! They didn' t really realize what was going on... thank god for the double glass windows!! Anyway, it was hillarous. 

Today we woke up to this splendid view of the station and the surrounding farm land.... it's like out of a movie set...



We also have the suspicion that to attract tourists to this end of the world, the Kiwis actually set this all up… they placed those amazing mountains, rivers and plain fields and turquoise lakes there .. it looks like out of  a movie set... Lord of the Rings comes alive... it really does! 

Right now we are at Te Anau, on the border of the Fiordlands of NZ... a tiny town ... a real variety to the hours driving though the most beautiful scenery through the mountains with nobody there except us and the sheeps .. no houses no stations to be seen... also, no radio... we are fluent in the song lyrics on our brought CDs yet! 

We are about to leave for the two hours drive to Milford Sound... where we are staying the night in the only backpacker there and leave for a trip to the Milford Sound tomorrow morning. Hopefully we' ll see the penguins, whales and dolphins. we are actually hoping for rain, since there won' t be sand flies then. 

More to come ... we now got to fill up our car... there isn' t a petrol station on the way to Milford .. which takes one way 2 hours! Also, there is just 1 bar .. probably closed after 5pm! 

More to come from the Mildford Sound adventures....