The rain doesn’t stop on the West Coast of New Zealand. It pours and pours and pours. My trip onto the glacier was canceled due to inclement weather. Shoes were still still soaking wet.
The giant bed in the hostel welcomed me with loving arms. My desire to lay around was very, very high. I thought about walking all the way out to Lake Matheson, but with the previous day’s soaking excursion still in mind, I wussed out and paid an old man a few dollars to drive me there and back.
The skies on the west coast of New Zealand were gloomy. It’d been raining on and off throughout the day. I finally made it to Fox Glacier after being cooped up on a bus all day. Never minding the threat of rain, I dropped off my gear at the Ivory Tower Lodge and laced up my boots. With a chance of my glacier trek getting canceled, I decided to go see Fox Glacier as up close and personal as I could get.
After finishing up my kayaking trip with Rosco’s Milford Kayaks, I had all the time to kill in the world. Lack of a car made it very difficult to get out of Milford Sound and the weather was too incredibly nice to spend it lazying around Milford Sound Lodge. With the US dollar’s strength, I was livin’ large, so I booked the last cruise for the day in the sound with Mitre Peak Cruises.
Milford Sound is one of the must-see places in New Zealand, according to anyone who has ever heard of New Zealand. After coming off the Routeburn Track, I hopped on a bus to Milford Sound. The standard sound exploration is via boat cruise. I wanted something different; I wanted to work for my experience, so I booked a trip with Rosco’s Milford Kayaks for the Stirling Sunriser trip. I was going to kayak under a waterfall!
My trip to New Zealand was my first ever international solo trip. Well, my first real big solo trip, ever. The idea of figuring out transport from destination to destination was really daunting. Really, really daunting. Normally I’d be okay with renting a car but factor in hours and hours of driving and the whole driving on the other side of the road thing and that idea died pretty quickly. I hate driving, except for the fact that I can sing along to my favorite country songs.
I considered hopping on the Kiwi Experience for a good period of time as it touched a little bit of everything I wanted to do. As I kept researching, my itinerary ended up diverging from the trip’s itinerary, and frankly, I like the outdoors more than I like being outgoing. After booking my huts for the Routeburn track, I said hell with it, I’ll figure out how to travel around the South Island without a car. To my surprise, it was surprisingly easy.