We lost Lars again that afternoon as we headed toward the Milford Sound (which is actually a fjord) from Bannockburn. We made it almost the whole 335 km. Our last lift, a German-Italian camped with us in a sand fly infested campsite. He took us to the entrance of the Homer tunnel so he could do a tramp in the area. The Kea kept us company and we only waited another couple of minutes for another German to pick us up and take us the rest of the way. The three of us did the Milford Sound cruise together - possibly my largest expense of the whole trip at $100 for the 2.5 hours. Definitely worth it for the views, meal and underwater museum. Our chauffeur took us back to the town of Te Anau where found a camp site nearby and had a family meal with our newly recovered Uri, Simon and Lars as well as a few more German girls.
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| Milford Sound |
The following evening brought us (minus Lars, Uri and Simon) to the Clifden caves which we explored the following morning, totally at Marion's mercy as she was the only one who had a torch. Later we headed south and stopped in Riverton on the way to Lignite Pit - which is essentially a mine come garden that lets you camp on their land for $5. We only got to enjoy the sun for about half an hour before a foreboding cloud blocked out the whole sky - this was a bit of pathetic fallacy for things to come in the Catlins region.
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| Lignite Pit |
The morning brought about lots of walking... until... we got picked up by a very familiar German called Jonasz who we'd met about seven months before in Auckland! And then more walking. There aren't a lot of people in the Catlins. So there's not a lot of cars. And not a lot of rides. To be perfectly honest, we only walked for another 8 km before we got a ride - not really so bad. After meeting some French, Germans and Czechs - who will become very important in about two posts - at a beach with Hector's Dolphins, we got very very stuck. Over an hour had passed and we hadn't seen any cars. We ended up knocking at the door of the first house we could find, which an elderly couple opened and graciously let us camp on their land for the night.
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| Beach where we saw Hector's dolphins... minus dolphins. |
Unfortunately, the weather for the remainder of Marion's most highly anticipated region was a bit dissapointing, so we had a speedy tour with a couple of Swedes and an English girl in their swanky van, through some rather pretty places (see below) before ending up just outside of Dunedin... sorely missing Lars.
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| Pretty places! Bad weather... |
