There is a movie theatre where you can sit in an old car or couches with a glass of wine and eat fresh cookies at intermission. We watched the new Snow White film and really enjoyed it. But really, it was all about the cookies for me.
Our last day in Wanaka we went on another insane scenic drive through Lindas Pass to a mountain formation that I learned about online called the Clay Cliffs. Over hundreds of years the slow trickling of water falling down this hillside has carved stalagmite-like formations out of the hillside. It was a site that belonged in Utah. Exploring the area, we found an opening that led into this bay of formations with one in the center that felt straight out of Mordor. That afternoon we went to a tourist trap called Puzzle World for Sarah's enjoyment. It was a place dedicated to games where there was a giant outdoor maze and rooms of illusion. The maze was really great and playing in the room that makes one person 2ft tall and the other person on the other side 10ft tall was fun to experience first hand.
The next morning we said goodbye to our lovely Wanaka room and headed to Milford for a cruise around fjords. The drive was long but the scenes along the way made it go fast. There was more farmland driving on this route with hundreds of sheep and deer farms along the way. I guess Merrino wool is only produced in NZ. The craziest part of the drive was carving through farm valleys and then approaching a tunnel that turned out to be a mile long down hill! The interior walls were raw and it was DARK in there. Going downhill in a tunnel was a strange sensation. Exiting the tunnel was like entering an entire new world. Lush green trees and huge granite hills overlapped each other in a pile of awesome. Looking back at the mountain we went through in the tunnel was a wall of rock towering thousands of feet. The sun and clouds were giving us quite a show of light and shadow and my camera was clicking away through the car windows. We were now in Fjordland National park and was just like the Northwest. Moss, ferns, towering trees, that crisp cold moist air - we were home! We stayed at Milford Lodge which is a killer spot on the river that is the only lodging close to Milford Sound so it has space for all types of travelers. It just so happens they had these modern chalet's right on the water which I scooped up way in advance. Floor to ceiling frameless windows on the corner provide seamless views of the river and the enormous hillside that had at least 30 waterfalls running down it. We spent almost all of our time looking out that window with a glass of wine. We even woke up early the next morning to do the same thing but with coffee. We even rented Lord of The Rings from the front desk that night, how couldn't you? Maybe the most surreal moving watching experience I have had, LOTR in NZ. The next morning we embarked on a 2 hour cruise around the Milford Sound on a small boat that could drive right up to the side of fjords. So, a fjord is a mountain valley that at some point get's filled in with water, in this case it was the Tasman Sea. It is an awesome vision and something I won't forget. There were some amazing waterfalls that the boat could get right under too which made some great photos. The water was a shade of dark turquoise and when the sun was on it looked as if we were in the Carribean. The whole cruise was narrated by the skipper which we also enjoyed the education of the experience.
If we were relocated in NZ instead of Australia, we would not be coming home. It is magical. I can't wait to come back sometime in the summer season and tour it in a bus.
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