Another day of cancelled tours and changing plans

Take two: we got up again early, this time to the sound of pouring rain, hoping to make it once again to Milford Sound. I was worried since it had rained all night there was no way the road would be open, but we had no choice but to continue on until the tour cancelled. We got ready and waited in the  dark and the rain at 6:30 am. Our taxi was supposed to arrive by 6:35, but we started to worry when he wasn’t there by 6:55. We called and they assured us they were coming. Finally, a taxi arrived and dropped us at the front of a hotel. After several attempts to board buses, we finally found one with a driver that had our ticket and we were off. He picked up a few more people and pulled into the bus depot (where our journey had ended so abruptly the day before. I began refreshing the website (this bus had WiFi) to see if the road was closed and sure enough, at 7:30am it said it was closed, to be updated at 10:30am. It takes us hours to get to that road, so our bus driver decided to keep driving that direction in case it opened at 10:30. Spoiler alert: about 45 minutes later, he got the call it would remain closed. So we turned around and we dropped back off in town, this time a little later than the day before.

Feeling a bit defeated and very sleep deprived, we decided to have a chill day. We got lunch at a restaurant that had been too crowded the night before (very good alcoholic ginger beer), took a scenic  cruise at 2pm where we chatted with a guy from Vancouver who said he had trouble differentiating the Kiwi accent from the Aussie accent, then shopped for a quick dinner to make later and returned to the hostel.

 

It might be lame, but we had like a two hour nap, got up, had dinner, then had a “slumber party” on my bottom bunk so we could watch a movie together. We were in bed by 11.

Checking out of Queenstown this morning! I have mixed feelings. It’s definitely more touristy, and therefore pricey, than I would prefer, but you just can’t dis those views, like this one from the balcony of our hostel:

Rotorua next!

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