The Final Stops

After a rainy night, we got up early and took the windy, turn after turn after turn drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound. This seems like a great time for the second edition of Ally's poorly made New Zealand travel maps! Check it out (if you're confused, Te Anau is the lower of the two furthest left pins):

At Milford Sound we did the only thing there is to do ... take a boat cruise! We chose Mitre Peak since they had smaller boats that didn't take buttloads (I mean, busloads) of tourists on board. Since it had been pouring the night before, we were surrounded by unreal waterfalls - it was hard to see where they came from due to the mist/fog/clouds, which made it that much more incredible. On top of all that beauty, our boat kept being chased by dolphins! At one point, the driver stopped the boat and a dolphin was just chilling right next to the bow, and Drea and I stood there staring at it for over a minute ... we were so close we could have touched it! It was a pretty magnificent experience overall.

When the cruise was over, we hopped back in the car and drove to Dunedin, our final stop of the trip. We stayed with Charlie, a friend from UBC, in an all-boys house (a little intimidating, not to mention the odd smell ... just kidding!). It was great to catch up with another old friend. While we were eating dinner, the news about the Japan earthquake / tsunami was on TV. It was terrifying to see a natural disaster of much greater severity so close after Christchurch had been impacted by one ... definitely didn't calm our nerves at all. 

If only they were real ...

That night, the girls went out to experience a good time Dunedin-style, but Derek and I stayed in since he'd accidentally ingested gluten with his Chinese dinner ... not very much fun for him! :( On Saturday morning we drove back to Christchurch, with a quick stop to a berry farm (mmm my favourite). We sorrowfully returned the Dragon to the car rental, and
started to prepare ourselves for the re-start of classes on Monday the 14th.