DAY 4

The highlight for today was our ferry trip on Milford Sounds (which is actually a Fjord). It had been raining the whole night and I was praying that the Lord would give us good weather for the trip. Well, He answered those prayers even though it was not what we had thought would be the best answer (details to follow).

It warmed up nicely (as you can see - no jackets) and stopped raining for our trip out.
Apparently the day before there were only 2 waterfalls to be seen on the entire trip. Well, with all that WONDERFUL RAIN the night before, we were blessed with hundreds of waterfalls to see.
The whole trip was just MAGNIFICENT. I have struggled to get this day's photos up because they are so disappointing.... I can't describe the absolute beauty that we got to see.
These photos are tiny little glimpses of what was truly amazing.

We could even get to enjoy the sights from the deck of the ferry for the ride out. It was a little windy so we all put jackets on.

Proof that Grandpa and Nana were with us. Also a little glimpse of the beauty of this fjord.

There are some waterfalls were they take the ferry up nice and close. Ruth and Hannah LOVED this and Hannah kept reaching out for the water (even though she was getting sprayed). They both really love water and enjoyed this experience (along with the rest of us).

Later we went up even closer to a huge waterfall and only Brendon, Ruth and myself stayed on deck (I think there was only 1 or 2 other passengers who stayed up). We got soaked (as expected) but it was an experience to remember. Rachel had decided at the last minute that she would also like to join us but there were no volunteers to bring her up (it was quite windy so close up to so much falling water).

Then Nana headed back to the wharf while the rest of us.....

went to the underwater observatory. This is a "floating building" which is attached to the side of the fjord by a few movable supports (so that it does not float away) and they have an under water observatory which is 8 meters underwater.

We had a little wait as there were other ferries with passengers wanting to join us on this experience. So the girls got to eat some apple and we got to dry our soaking wet jackets at their big heater.

Then down we went. There were a lot of fish as well as beautiful sea urchins and anemones ect. Ruth spotted this fish which was rather well camouflaged.

So it was a round room with the stairs coming down the middle. Around the observatory (just lower than the windows) is a shelf that is covered in sea plants. This encourages the fish to come and live and feed around the observatory and we learnt so much on our time here.

Poor Hannah was getting tiered and hungry though.... It had been a long morning for her.

She enjoyed a biscuit and a sit on Grandpa's lap as we headed back to the wharf.

We were so thankful that we had organized to do this trip. It was wonderful.
We had lunch in the camper and then headed off for our days travel.

We traveled only 260km today and reached Gore in time for dinner which was nice.