Colours!

Ok we figured out part of the mystery of the alcoholic kids and the mother. They weren't upset that we were in the common room, but they were discussing that the internet was coin-operated. BUT that doesn't explain the beer and vodka. Seriously, I saw one of the kids sip from his tallboy!
Today I drove on the wrong side of the road for the first time! Make that, I drove on the wrong side of the parking lot and laneway. I moved our campa to a parking spot behind our lodge. Yay me!

We got up early to go on our Milford Sound tour. Everything was so beautiful! There were lakes and rivers and real live fjords and mountains as high as the eye could see. What gets me the most is that everything looks painted. I mean, i can't believe that everything is real, and I can't believe how artists can get it to look like that. We saw so many colours of water too.. aqua, dark blue, dark green, dark aqua, bright blue, milky jade green, and last night at the Glow Worm cave, a crystal colourless clear. New Zealand is the land of beautiful coloured water.

Our tour guide, Simon, stopped a bunch of times to let us go on little walking trails. We stopped at The Chasm, which is a total tease on the way up. First you see some trees. Then some small rocks. Then you see a rocky falls where you think that if it was pouring out, water would be sloshing down that trail, but it's currently dry. Then you see another dry rock way but you hear some water. Then you see yet another rock way but this time with a little bit of water trickling down. And so on and so forth until you hear the most tremendous crashing sound, and you round the corner and in the middle of a plank bridge, you realize you are standing on top of this HOLE in the earth and there is water everywhere and it is just intensely amazing.
New Zealand is so stunning. I regret planning our vacation to spend more time in Australia than New Zealand, and I regret not allocating enough time here. Everything we see is just beautiful. Even all the lamb everywhere doesn't make me feel bored (just dry from saying "baa" so often).
Oh right. Ok. So we went on a Milford Sound cruise and went under Stirling Falls (I got SOAKED but The Boy just laughed from inside) and touched (well, the boat did) the Tasman Sea. As you can expect, it was gorgeous.

When we got back to Te Anau, we hung out in the city for a bit and got ourselves organized to get back on the road. We drove to Queenstown and met a disorganized Quebec girl working her first shift at a restaurant ever (well, that's what we think!). The food was very good for the price. Maybe the whole restaurant was new...