Monday Oct 9, 2023 Day 23 – Tour 6:00am We are getting for today’s adventure. 6:30am We met Fred & Sallyann for breakfast. This hotel has multiple buildings with walkways and elevators. It is a tad confusing. 7:15am We are all on the coach and headed for Milford Sound. 8:55am Just entered Red Tussock Conservation Area. 9:25am Stopped for rest stop in Te Anau, Southland at the Alpine Centre Café & Bar. 9:55am Back on the move after a short rest stop. Most of our group had opted for a plane ride from Milford Sound back to Queenstown. It is about 5 to 6 hours by coach and 45 minutes by plane. The coach goes no matter what the weather is. The planes are pretty small (I think Ronan said 6 passengers) and not good in bad weather. He informed us that at this time is doesn’t look like the planes will fly, but he will get the final word later. 10:38am A quick stop for some photo opportunities at a pull off on the side of the Te Anau Milford Highway at the Eglinton Flats. 10:45am Back on the move. 10:49am We have stopped and are about to do the Mirror Lakes Walk. 11:06am On the move and heading for Milford Sound. 11:14am Another stop. Google maps calls it “Knobs Flat Toilets”. 11:20am Back on the bus. 12:24pm Stop at a viewpoint on the Tutoko River. 12:33pm Back on the coach. 12:40pm We have arrived at Milford Sound boat dock. Walked from the bus to the terminal and waited to board the RealNZ Milford Sovereign. 1:00pm We are on the Milford Sovereign ship. We had an assigned table that came with a box lunch for each of us. The entire boat ride was rainy and dreary. For the most part we stayed inside the main cabin/seating area. Some of us did venture topside for photos or just a look. Just wasn’t a good day for a boat ride. 3:00pm We are back on the coach after our boat ride on Milford Sound. Milford Sound is actually a fiord but it was named long before they knew better. The tour might have been great in better weather. It was raining almost the entire time on the boat. The windows were not very clean and some of the things they announced were hard to see. We didn’t see any wildlife. They can see whales, porpoises, sea lions and birds. I did see one lone gull. 3:27pm One bright spot on the ride back to Queenstown is that we did get to see a few Keas (an endemic parrot) while stopped waiting in traffic to pass through a tunnel. 3:30pm Ride back to Queenstown is very dreary and rainy. 5:20pm Back on the move after another rest stop. I asked Ronan if he knew what kind of deer they are raising on all the farms we have seen. He said most are Red Deer. 6:10pm The driver hit the brakes pretty hard. At first just a couple of cars on the side of the road could be seen. Then we see people trying to catch a young lamb that somehow got through the fence. Our driver pulled up and informed the people that they would never manage to catch the lamb and that, left alone, it would find its own way back through. 7:45pm Got back to hotel about 7:30pm. Went to the front desk and asked about the laundry in the hotel. We got a bunch of NZ$2.00 coins for the machines. We also asked about shiny NZ coins. When in Australia we just saved the best coins we saw of each denomination. Some are nice, some not so nice. We decided to ask and got 3 very nice coins of each type. (As I’m doing this webpage I have already glued magnets to the coins and they are on a wall with the many souvenir magnets we bought on the trip – 11/02/2023) 9:05pm Just back to the room after dinner. Sallyann and Barbara had the pasta of the day, chicken alfredo, Fred had pork bellies, John had crispy chicken (fried spiced chicken strips on a bed of rice noodles). We are grabbing our laundry and heading down to get some clean clothes. 11:40pm Laundry is done. While waiting for machines and doing our laundry we managed to consume a bottle of wine with Sallyann & Fred. The laundry room is in the parking garage in the basement of our hotel building. We also met Dan and Lori trying to do their laundry.