Milford Sound, a land of extremes

The life of a vampire, er, bartender. Up all night, sleep all day, and wincing in the sunlight. The new bar, Skybar, is going well. Chris and I have developed quite a reputation in town and every week is starting to get busier. I think we are becoming the new place to be in Queenstown! Chris has just amazed me at how well he can create a party, play the right music, and win the crowd. I’m leaning so much about people, about creating fun, and about life down here.

I feel that I have changed my outlook on things--not quite sure exactly how, but I know I have. I seem to live for the moment a bit more, treating my life as if it were short. For example, I feel like skydiving, which is something I’ve always been scared of, but I want to do it. Maybe breaking free from corporate America, and away from routine unleashed something inside me, like a personal liberation. I’ve noticed that traveling abroad generally causes one’s outlook on life to become more broad and global. Queenstown is special in the fact that you meet people that have done the same, broken away from their comfort zone. Its inspiring to hear their stories about travel and experiences.

The progression of Skybar is great but also exhausting for Chris and I since we are the only two running the bar--we are struggling to find any good staff with a bit of personality at the moment. This makes it really hard to get away and as a result, I haven’t done much outside of Queenstown which is a bit sad. However, we got someone to cover temporarily for one night and we got a chance to visit one of the icons of New Zealand, Milford Sound.

Milford Sound is part of Fiordland National park located on the Southwest coast of the South Island and a 5hr drive from Queenstown. Chris, my Scottish friend Stu, and I started the day with a five hour drive to the sound at 6am, which was completely backwards hours for us (Chris worked the night before and didn’t go to bed). However, we booked a 2 ½ hr boat cruise through the sound the day before and were looking forward to a nice relaxing day. The morning was misty and foggy and we were worried that we weren’t going to see anything when we got there, but it made for some nice photos along the way. The drive was still incredible and we still got to see some really nice scenery.

We arrived at Milford into a bunch of fog and frustrated and tired, we napped for an hour. Then, surprisingly, one ½ hr before our cruise, the sun burned the fog away, and the weather turned out perfect!

(My friends Till (GER), Chris (Skybar and ENGLAND), and Stu (Scotland))

We had an incredible narrated cruise through the sound relaxing and taking in some breathtaking sights. The massive valleys were created by extremely thick glaciers, some as thick as 1400 meters (~ 4500 ft) during the last ice age. We learned the rock around the place is mainly volcanic and thus very dense. The extreme pressure and grinding of the glaciers long ago left ‘wrinkles’ in the rock that are still visible today as evidence of the incredible force of the ice.

(Chris and I)