January 9

Again, as usual, I was up at 0640, had a cup of tea, some toast and had a shower. After this, I got dressed and we were off to Milford Sound by 0730. It was raining again.
This time we got a good run – there were few vehicles until we were fifteen kilometres out of Milford Sound, where we ran into a bus and some cars. We arrived at Milford sound about 0910 and had to walk through the rain to a walkway, then into the Visitors’ Centre. The cruise we had booked ourselves on had been cancelled because of boat engine failure, but we were offered a cruise on the Milford Mariner instead (half an hour longer, but no extra cost for us). While we were waiting we ran into the girls from the Hangi at Rotorua – they were going on an earlier cruise on the Red Cruises.
We were onto our boat at 1020 and it left the dock left at 1030. Once on board we met up with two families from yesterday (one Irish, one from Auckland) and others from Singapore (American), Holland (a couple and two girls – there can’t be anyone left in the Netherlands!) and Canberra. There were spectacular views as we headed out in Milford Sound, but the rain and mist blocked parts out. The rain and mist disappeared as we exited Milford Sound into the Tasman Sea – the rain just stopped. Then it was clear all the way back, so the views were plainly visible this time. We arrived back at the dock and were off the boat at about 1310. We walked back to the car and drove back to Te Anau. We stopped at a few places (Fran’s usual ‘good’ spots – less than fifty metres walk) and longer at Mirror Lake. We arrived back in town at 1630 and went to get some tea – there were no sausage rolls left, so we had to get some at the supermarket.
We went back to the motel unit and had lunch, wrote up postcards we had bought and posted them down the street. Again we walked back to the unit. I downloaded photos from the day, named and processed them. At this stage, for some reason, I wasn’t feeling well.
We watched the news on TV and saw an item about two deaths on Fox Glacier – young Australian Indians.
I wrote up my blogs in summary but had no tea – I was still not feeling well. I had to be up early tomorrow as we are off to Bluff, so I was off to bed about 2200.