Wet, Wetter, Fjordland

Day 189

"In the rain,
The pavement shines like silver.
All the lights
Are misty in the river."

This will be a rare pictureless entry for long time so bare with me...those checking this blog for pictures only can wait for next entry *cough* Shadar *cough* ;-P Reason is simple, there are 2 computers in Stewart Island - my current location for next 4 days - and neither has usb ports. Otherwise I would have to wait another week or so before being able to write new entry, so I figured to update situation a bit now.

Last time I wrote Sami, Tuulia and I were suffering from weird virus, which has mostly passed now. At the moment Sami and Tuulia are already on their way back to Finland and I decided to take some time for myself at this very remote location of New Zealand, not too many tourists around here. But more about Stewart Island on next entry.

My purpose to visit Fjordland was 2 magnificient fjords there, Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound. Yea yea, they are named Sounds, but are in fact fjords. People who named them originally back in 18th century thought they were sounds. Now, according to quite popular travel website, TripAdvisor(Facebook users should know this), Milford Sound is voted as #1 travel destination in entire world so expectations were more than high for it.

As I got to Te Anau, I noticed there were 30 or so boats going to Milford Sound every day, nearly all were Samsonite pleasure cruises. Now, I figured I wanted something different, so I booked place for only dive operator doing trips to Milford. Why enjoy this magnificient fjord from above water only when I was able to go underwater as well? Yea, price was lot bigger but then again, in how many places in world are you able to dive a fjord? I have to say that diving conditions were more unique than ever. I'm going to bore people now and explain them :)

Fjordland gets heavy rain all year round and is surrounded by mountain peaks which some even have snowcaps. As this rain falls down from mountains it is very very cold. It creates 5-7m freshwater layer into the fjord which is very cold, +9 at this time of the year. This cold freshwater is very dark, thus it blocks lot of the sunlight making conditions 10m below surface like it's 70m below. Because of this effect, there is lot of deep water marine life in Milford Sound just 10-15m below surface that you normally wouldn't able to see anywhere. Below freshwater is normal saltwater with pretty tolerable temperature, +16 on my dives.

Before trip I was little scared how my extremely sore and infected throat would cope the cold water and diving, but...I figured what doesn't kill me, simply makes me strang...stronger :) All in all, it went better than I expected. It was cold, but for some reason under the water I didn't feel any soreness. Other thing that puzzled me afterwards was that I was able to drop all the way to 20m without having the need to equalize even once...am I turning into fish?

Otherwise trip to Milford was okish, weather was horrible but as they told us, it has been horrible for past month or so. It just rained and rained and clouds were very low making it impossible to see the high peaks surrounding fjord. But even with the cloudcover, it was clear how massive and spectacular that fjord was. I definetly felt like I was in middle of a movie set.

After Milford I went to see Doubtful Sound the next day. To this I had to choose Samsonite cruise since it was pretty much the only option. Where as Milford is easily accessible, Doubtful isn't. Thats also why less tourists go there which is always nice. Difference between Milford and Doubful are pretty apparent from pictures(if I ever get them online). Doubtful is much more massive and peaks surrounding it are bigger, but Milford is more picturesque with beatiful waterfalls surrounding it all the time.

Ok, time is up soon. I wish I could write more about my current state of mind, how traveling gets tougher and tougher after 6 months, how it gets more and more difficult to get impressed or even excited about new things, how pathetic New Zealanders are behind wheel, how this country seems constantly to be under watchful eye of Big Brother, how accident prone all Kiwi's are, etc. ...but all this has to wait. I hope I find cheap enough internet on the road and write all this and more.

But for now it's bye bye. Next entry won't be sooner than 13th or 14th January...assuming I survive Stewart Island crazy wildlife(=local fishermen).