Queenstown & Milford Sound

From Wanaka we drove over the Cardrona mountains (Ski resort in winter) to Queenstown! Home of all crazy activities, including the one that has eluded us so far....Bungy Jumping! But first off we had the small matter of St Paddy's Day to contend with! After a fair few afternoon beers we decided to splash out on a proper Ruby Murry....including 2 bottles of BYO wine (the corkage costing the same as one bottle of our wine). Got bloody good feed, so much so that after another couple of beers there was no room for owt else.....so Georgie had to leave the dance floor early to escort a rather bloated Chris back to our van, that was sneekly parked up in a quiet residential street (more free camping)! Following morning we decided it was going to be Bungy day!!! Waited for the sun to come out and headed over the Kawarea Bridge (home of the first commercial bungy!), after watching other throw themselves from the bridge (43m) Georgie decided that this wasn't for her...so Chris took up the challenge and off he went! Literally, like a new born fledgling leaving the nest, having failed to perfect the swallow dive! We drove 5 mins down the road and Georgie had a sudden change of heart, and back we went! This time she didn't bottle out, with some unknown courage she made a perfect dive off towards the water below! Bloody proud of herself! We've now done every available adrenalin activity in NZ...bring on croc wrestling in Oz!!!
From Queenstown we did the long drive down to Milford Sound in terrible weather, which just got worse when we got there! Having decided there was no point doing the cruise of the sound that afternoon we parked up in the official n0-camping carpark and illegally camped, along with about 20 other campervans! These Kiwi's aren't very good at enforcing their laws! The following morning the weather cleared (but only for a short while), we did the morning 'Coffee Cruise' a bargain at only $40 (normally $160 if you get coach from Queenstown & do the same thing!) with free coffee & muffin on board! The Sound (actually a huge old glacial fjiord) was pretty spectacular, but not as long as I expected, overly hyped & priced.....seen some equally impressive scenery in the more remote parts that only our van (Super 'Mo') can get to! From leaving Milford we passed through Te Anau, briefly stopping to do 1.5hr walk to start of Keplar Track (another one of these famous 4/5 day Tramps), before parking up for night at Clifford Suspension bridge (no relation to the Clifton....and certainly not as impressive!). Had an interesting night parked up here, when in the middle of the night 2 cars pulled up with lights blaring, sounding horn and then one car hanging around about 50m away...guy acting suspicious with torch! Georgie got freaked out so Chris had to jump into the drivers seat and head out of there sharpish, still only wearing his pants! (clean Calvins...well by our standards!)

Chris after his jump, bridge in background!

Clouds in my Coffee!

400m of waterfall