Milford Sound

 Milford Sound was top priority and we wanted to do a hard-core kayaking trip.

We had probably seen a photo like this in a brochure and thought "Hell Yeah!  That's us!"

After finding a caravan park, we settled on this trip for the next day.  Although I have no idea why, because we were neither experienced kayakers or morning people.  So it was with a certain sense of foreboding that I rugged up in bed in our van that night.  A sense of doom that skyrocketed at about 3am when a violent storm woke me up.  The heavy rain and wind rocked the van and I thought 'surely the trip will be canceled.'  

 

 

Wrong!

The guide was ready to rock at 6 am, despite the sheeting rain and gale-force wind.  There were no refunds (and we had paid a pretty penny for the trip) so against our better judgement we climbed into head-to-toe waterproof onesies, and squeezed into our kayaks.  And it was actually ok!  And a lot of fun! The rain eased off.  For about the first hour.  

Then things changed.  Romain looks worried for his life in this photo.  Because he was.  Suddenly a squall hit, and the ordinarily relatively calm waters of Milford sound were whipped into a frenzy of waves.  An actual penguin came zipping across the waves and past us, on it's way to the shore.  I'm sure it yelped "follow me fools" as it passed.  But we didn't.  We persevered onward, into deeper waters.

 

 

Then mini water spouts started spinning towards us and shit got real.  We were in a group of about 6 kayaks and we were being separated from each other by big waves.  

"Raft up!!" our guide yelled.  Which meant we all had to squeeze into a huddle and hang onto each others kayaks.  Safety in numbers I suppose...

So the plan to paddle to the Tasman Sea was abandoned, and an emergency call was made.  After a tense and rather long wait, a rescue boat pulled up and threw us a rope.  We were towed into a calmer bay, passing some amazing waterfalls on the way.  "They are not usually flowing so strongly like this" the guide said.

Once safe in our calmer bay, we paddled around a lot and had our lunch snacks.  The guide directed us over to a bank and said if we were lucky we would see a family of penguins that sometimes hung out there.  As if on cue, they appeared!  Waddling and wobbling around.  "This in an incredibly rare occurrence" he assured us.  

And we believed him.  

Until a cruise boat of people turned up to see the same "incredibly rare occurrence".  I think the poor guide was just trying to make us feel a little less sad about missing out on our real itinerary.

Anyway, it was an excellent trip nonetheless.  And the penguins were really cute.