around the world in 180 days

Before we left Invercargill yesterday, we stopped by the DOC office and had a lovely conversation with an older lady who worked there. She told us that the Rees-Dart trek is her 2nd favorite, second to the Routeburn, which is one of the great walks and is completely booked. She also showed us a weather report, which said, in her words, that the air was turning to custard.
Apparently custard means rain in Kiwi-speak, because that’s exactly what it did, messing about with it in the afternoon, on again/off again, before settling in for a good long soak last night. The weather report looked terrible for the whole week.
Lucky for us, Rich, who we stayed with in  Wellington (thanks Beth!!), knew a very nice lady who lives in Te Anau, the gateway to the Milford Sound, one of the most beautiful and heavily visited areas of NZ. Her name is LIsa and she was kind enough to let us sleep in her spare bedroom. We’re staying at her house again tonight and, as it’s supposed to snow in the mountains and hail everywhere, we’re very grateful for her hospitality.
We spent today driving up to Milford Sound and doing day-hikes to the sides. We were ready for rain, since the air had turned to custard, but when we woke up, the sun was peeking through the clouds and there were large patches of blue sky. We took off from Lisa’s house as early as we could, determined to make the most of what little nice weather we had, expecting it to start raining at any moment.
It did rain, off and on, but for a region that gets 7 meters of rain annually (about 24 feet for us Americans) we didn’t do too bad. We made it up to Key Summit, which is a short piece along the Routeburn track, and had great mountain views in all directions. Once we were satisfied, we booked back down the hill and headed to Lake Marian, a glacial lake we could see in the distance. Two hours later, we stood on the shore, after a rough, rocky and very wet climb. The scenery was amazing, as beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen. In some ways, it reminds me of Alaska, but in some ways, it’s even more dramatic. The cliff faces are vertical in a lot of places–you can see tiny streams falling and falling down the face of the cliffs, tumbling from as high as you can see to below your feet. I tried to take some photos, but a camera can’t capture something that tremendously huge. I guess that parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were filmed somewhere around here, and the Southern Alps (the range we were hiking in today) was used for the Misty Mountains.
We felt pretty lucky to have such great weather after expecting to be hiking in rain. We covered two long day-hikes that we probably wouldn’t have even tried if it had been raining and we were rewarded with amazing views. Today kind of made up for that miserable hike up the Tongariro Crossing a while back. Hopefully the weather will clear for us and our trip along the Ress/Dart will be in good weather. Fingers crossed.