Up early this morning because we were promised beautiful views. Our ship entered Milford sound about 6am and the sunrise was at 6:05am. We were on the deck to watch- it wasn’t really a sunrise but we did see a tiny wisp of pink cloud. It’s another wonderful day- warm & sunny.
The views were wonderful and the wind was strong and warm. After standing at the front of the ship for 30 minutes or so, I was tired of the wind and went to watch the views from inside. It took us about an hour to reach the end of Milford Sound where we turned around. At that point I discovered the other end of the ship had minimal wind and just as fine views. That’s where we had breakfast while watching the views go by. At one point the captain maneuvered the ship so we were right next to a waterfall.
There were two presentations in the morning- “Afraid of the Light” discussing the many nocturnal animals of New Zealand and “Sandflies, Penguins and Rocks” covering the topics in the talk title.
The cruise director asked the captain to slow down so we could be on a scenic section while we had our BBQ lunch on the back deck. The BBQ was pretty tasty and there was a little food art too.
By the time lunch was over, and we arrived and anchored at Grono Bay we were ready for the afternoon activities. Because of the wind, weather and tides, we were able to go thru a very narrow gap in the sound- pretty fun to see how close we could get to land(maybe 30 feet on each side?). For our afternoon activities Tibor went on the hike and Jennifer and I went on the zodiac cruise. Since our group was the second group to go out on the zodiac, I took a short nap before the zodiac cruise. It’s a good thing the announcements are loud and easily heard so I didn’t miss my zodiac cruise.
