New Zealand: day 18 - Te Anau to Milford Sound

Today I woke up early to take my Italian lesson over zoom. I had missed the last few weeks b/c of the travel schedule and was looking forward to today's.  Sadly, a work emergency emerged at the same time, so I only got about 5 minutes of Italian lesson before I had to leave the zoom to work on the work issue.  Alas.

We checked out of our lovely hotel in Te Anau, gassed up the car, and hit the road for Milford Sound.  The drive takes about 2 hours, but we had budged over twice that so that we could take pit stops, small hikes, and lots of photos.  Sadly, the weather was pretty miserable for the whole drive.  Not dangerous, just lame.  Rain and wind made walking annoying and photography impossible.  We took a few short stops, but mostly we just persevered into Milford Sound.  

roadside pullout for waterfall!

We got to the Milford Sound Lodge a little early and were able to check right into our room (they had us scheduled for an early check-in, which I don't remember requesting).  It was still spitty and misty, with fog everywhere, so we spent some time settling in to our room (2-BR suite) and getting comfortable.  S and I took a quick walk/hike to see the area, and the fog was nestling nicely into the craggy cliffsides (H stayed in to play video games).

At 4pm, we met up with a naturalist at the lodge for an introduction to local flora & fauna.  Henrique taught us a lot, and he had a lovely passion for his work.  He introduced each tree and mountain to us as a 'new friend.' H stayed into play video games.

After the naturalist walk, we finally got some good photos of a fantail!  These birds are pretty comfortable around humans, but they're so quick that they're hard to photograph.  I finally got one!

Dinner was in the lodge restaurant, Pio Pio, and was pretty fancy.  Afterwards, the fog had started to clear, and the three of us took a short but steep hike up to a lookout, from where we had a great view of Mitre Peak and another fantail.

Then back to the room to settle in for the night.  I'm going to try to catch sunrise tomorrow morning!