Well, it just shows that good things come to those who wait. It was worth hanging around in Te Anau for another day because Milford Sound was breathtaking and the weather was perfect - gloriously sunny with barely a cloud in the sky. This is a real anomaly in a place that receives between 6 and 8 metres of rain a year, where they joke that 5 days without rain equals a drought. After the downpour and road closure of yesterday, it came as a surprise that everything was so clear and bright.

I took a bus to Milford (named after Milford Haven in Wales), which started life as three thatched huts and hasn't expanded much since. It is the end point of the famous Milford Track, a four day hike which is closed during winter due to snow. We drove past Lake Te Anau and through Fiordland National Park, filled with towering snowy mountains, clear lakes and fast moving blue streams. We stopped at Gunner Lake and The Chasm, where the water has carved out the rock in large holes. We passed through the dark Homer Tunnel under a mountain and down the winding road on the other side.

The boat trip around the Sound, which is actually a fjord (it was created by a glacier, not a river), took an hour and three quarters and went all the way out to the Tasman Sea, past Mitre Peak, Bowen Falls and Fury Falls. Milford Sound is one of 14 fjords in the Fiordland National Park but was the last to be discovered (in 1810) as it can't be seen from the sea. We saw a New Zealand fur seal and a pod of bottlenose dolphins, who played around the bow of the boat, leaping out of the dark tannin-stained water. The mountains and walls of rock were dramatic and I took a trillion photos. It was a really refreshing and exhilarating trip.

I got the bus back to Queenstown and chose a hostel near the bus stop as I'm leaving early tomorrow to go to the Fox Glacier. The hostel is overpriced and poky, and I'm in a room with three 18 year old Australian blokes who have been there a while judging by the state of the room. They were nice guys but make me feel like a bit of a granny in comparison.