Milford Sound - Queenstown - Glenorchy - Mount Cook

On the way to Milford Sound, where we had booked a boat tour, we passed the sweet town with a beautiful view of Te Anau. We spent a whole day there wandering around the town (mostly souvenir shops) and looking for a hairdresser for Axel. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, so we had to postpone the latter.

In the evening, we continued to a campsite that was quite outrageous with $13 per person for a stinking outhouse without running water. The next day, we started our journey to Milford Sound from there. Since our boat tour wasn't scheduled until late afternoon, we used the day to recharge all our electronic devices, as it was not so easy to keep both mobile phones, the camera battery, and the laptop running for a long time. Moreover, to our surprise, there was nothing to see there except for the "boat terminals".

When it finally started, we were able to admire the fiord for 2 hours, as well as some waterfalls trickling from the mountains into the sea. In between, we were offered a free dinner, which was much better than we expected. However, the stupid thing was that Axel's camera suddenly displayed an error message while he was taking a photo, which completely rendered the camera unusable, even after a week and multiple visits to specialty stores.

From there, we first went to Lumsden to a free campsite, which is the best one we have visited so far. After 2 nights there, we continued to Queenstown, the "city of adrenaline", as there are endless expensive activities such as bungee jumping, skydiving, etc. The city was absolutely crowded with young tourists, mainly backpackers, and it was full of "cheap" offers.
Since we didn't like the city so much, we only did some things there, such as shopping, extending the registration for our car, and Axel's long-awaited visit to the hairdresser. We also treated ourselves to the supposedly best burger in New Zealand after waiting in line for 30 minutes.

To escape the "big city life" for now, we drove to the quiet nearby town of Glenorchy on the same day. From there, we got ready the next morning to climb Mount Alfred. After 3 torturous hours and 1200 meters of altitude on a quite neglected hiking trail, we finally reached the top of the mountain. From there, we had an incredibly beautiful view of Lake Wakatipu, surrounded by the surrounding mountains. After 2 ½ hours of knee-straining descent, we were unsure if we would do this hike again despite the view, it was so exhausting!

The next morning, we went to Mount Cook, the highest glacier in New Zealand. In the first night there at Lake Tekapo, we were able to see the most beautiful starry sky by far that we have ever seen. The sky was so cloudless that we could see the entire Milky Way and the sky curved like a huge dome above us.

The following day, we drove along the vibrant blue Lake Pukaki to Mount Cook, where we did a short hike recommended to us. The trail took us over wobbly suspension bridges close to the glacier, so we could see large ice blocks in the lake in front of the mountain.

Now that we have started "proper traveling", it becomes a bit more difficult to divide the experiences into sections. Therefore, we will try to give an update once a week. :)

Now we continue up the currently unfortunately rainy West Coast to the north of the South Island...