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 As we flew south from Wellington, a marvelous thing occurred - the rains stopped and the sun came out. Clearly the South Islanders are sacrificing sheep (did we mention that there are
sheep in New Zealand?) or something to the sun god.  We arrived in Queenstown at midday and rented another car. We drove out to our hotel, the Nugget Point Resort, which was
located on a point overlooking a wide expanse of the Shotover River. It was a beautiful place and had a spectacular view.
 After lunch we went back to town and explored Queenstown.
It's an old mining town near a lake that has turned itself into a resort town, sort of like Aspen or Breckenridge in Colorado. As an aside, the countryside here reminded us a lot of southern Colorado.  The main tourist focus here is on "adventure" or "thrill" seeking
though it is also the center of the New Zealand ski region. The
Bungy jump was invented here and the town is full of places promoting thrill events such as bungy jumping, jet boating, sky diving, hang gliding, etc., you get
the picture. We decided to tour the area instead and reserve our thrill seeking for the small plane ride to Milford Sound and back.
 We explored Arrowtown, which is another recycled mining town and bought
a few wool items. We assume they came from local sheep (did we mention that there are sheep in New Zealand?).  We also visited a few vineyards, one of which, Chard Farm, was an adventure in itself. It is perhaps fitting that it is located across the canyon from the bridge where
bungee jumping was invented (yup, we avoided the temptation). To get to it you have to drive up a one-lane mountain road with no guardrail between you and the river gorge below. You
really don't want to meet anyone, as backing up would be a real challenge. The wines were quite good but the place is so small that the wines are not sold outside of New Zealand. They
did not charge for the tastings, which is now common in most places as we suspect they knew that the prospect of the drive down the hill kept the sampling to a minimum.
 On the last day in Queenstown we had our (twice postponed)
flight to Milford Sound scheduled.  This is a must do in New Zealand and we did not want to
miss the chance even though we had to drive to Dunedin in the afternoon. We were taken to the airport and saw one of the twin 6 seater airplanes used to make the trip. One was named Dry and one named Wet. We
suspect someone had a sense of humor in naming the planes since on a rough day your shorts went out dry and came back wet after the trip. We now know this from personal experience!
 The weather was borderline in Milford Sound (rain and fog
imported from the North Island especially for us) but the pilot gave the trip a go as his bar bill was overdue. Off we went into the wild gray yonder.  The view was beyond spectacular since we were so close to the mountains but the ride was quite bumpy as the air
currents buffeted us about, sort of like bungy jumping with a wet noodle. We got lots of photos of mountains and some up (real) close and when we broke through the cloud cover over
the Sound we had a good tour down the Sound at 1000 feet or so. We landed at the small Milford Sound airport which is the busiest in New Zealand with
over 200 take offs and landings per day by small planes. From there it was a short trip to the Red Boat for a tour of the Sound.
 The Red Boat that we were on is a decent sized ship that
specializes in trips up and down the Sound. As we were on the first run of the day, and it is a 5-hour drive from anywhere to get there, it was relatively empty of passengers, which was
good for us. We could stay inside when we wanted to stay warm and dry (did we mention it was raining?) and go outside to see the sights up close.  It is a spectacular sight and we saw some wildlife like porpoises,
seals, and various birds. One of the funniest sights was a bunch of Japanese tourists chasing the porpoises in kayaks to no avail (Ed. Note: Larry swears that when the plane flew over
them on the way out of the Sound that from the air the kayaks were in a Yen Currency sign formation in the middle of the sound...but then he is the only one who saw the shark on the
Great Barrier Reef snorkel trip so who knows what to believe!). We also saw some great waterfalls up close as you can see from the pictures.
Incidentally, the scars down the mountain are not caused by mining but by "tree avalanches". The ground cover is so thin that it cannot support the trees forever. Eventually a tree
breaks lose on the mountain and causes a chain reaction all the way down to the sound as all the trees slide down. It takes up to 10-15 years to get any new ground cover and up to a century to regrow the trees.
 The trip back on the small plane was exciting as well. The
landing was interesting as we landed at a 90 degrees angle to the paved runway on the grass. As you can see, Arnie got to try his hand at small plane piloting, which added to everyone's
discomfort. After that it was on the road to drive to Dunedin.
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