The only other experience I’ve had where someone told me to close my mouth and move along was in the Tutankhamen exhibit at the Egyptian Museum.  Well, today rivaled that experience.  We were picked up at Brown’s Hotel, where the innkeepers are on vacation.  I volunteered Wayne and I for the next vacation watch to no avail.  After a short bus trip we arrived at the Queenstown airport to catch our flight to Milford Sound.  The airport was alive with activity since no flights to Milford Sound had taken off for the last two days due to weather.  Our pilot explained that they depend completely on visual flight rules so an overcast day could ruin many a vacation.  We were exceptionally fortunate that today was saturated with sunlight.  In Milford Sound, the home of the Milford Track, a quite well known hiker destination, the trees cling to the sides of the mountains and do not have a root structure.  Since the mountains are pure rock, when it rains the water collects into multiple waterfalls that tumble into the sound.  It is spectacular.  So spectacular that words do not do justice so I will leave it to the visuals to tell the story.  After landing, we boarded a boat to cruise around the sound, ate a brief lunch, and then flew back to Queenstown.  I lobbied our pilot, Aaron, with every flight terminology I knew and was able to needle my way into the co-pilot seat for the return trip.  Simply amazing.

The web server won’t let me load videos so I will post to YouTube and post the links here.