Te Anau and the Milford Road – New Zealand’s beauty puts us in danger

Posted by: Emilie | May 8, 2011

Te Anau and the Milford Road – New Zealand’s beauty puts us in danger

Day 224 Monday 8th November 2010 –> Day 227 Thursday 11th November 2010

The first Holiday Park we checked was far from Te Anau and had no Wifi and so we went on. The friendly owner explained to us why it was like that. He said that in New Zealand, the New Zealand Telecom is taking advantage of their monopoly position and acting very slow and cumbersome. The internet line was stopping 3km East of the road and started again 4km away on the WestSide, but in between just nothing… Well there seems to be quite a few reasons why the Internet is a disaster in New Zealand and it was much easier and even cheaper in countries like Nicaragua or Bolivia to get into the Internet.

Landscape outside of Te Anau

In Te Anau we arrived we looked for another Holiday Park there and settled our tent. In the morning we visited a free bird park at the Te Anau Lake. There we could see lots of the many funny New Zealand birds, which we really enjoyed. Especially since our meeting with the Keas, we were becoming real “Bird Watcher”. Everywhere you meet birds that are no comparison with the ones at home and most of them are not afraid of people due to the late settlement of New Zealand. Unfortunately, many of the species are already extinct and others are highly threatened due to the most obvious reasons from entrained animals and change in the ecosystem.

Our camping spot the first night

In the afternoon we planned to drive on the Milford Road. This 117 km long route goes from Te Anau in the Fiordland National Park to the famous Milford Sound and is one of the most beautiful route in the world.

Break at the Milford Road

Milford Road, on the left we have mountains that looks like Machu Picchu, in the back like the Alps and on the right side like Condoriri Trek… and Emilie and Goetz!

Start of Fjordland

On the road there are dozens of campgrounds and so we planned a picnic at Milford Sound and to make it to find a nice finally campground on the way back. The road was incredible and there were some remarkable stops on the road. After 99 km you drive through the Homer Tunnel, made out of a huge rock wall and never-ending sets of waterfalls…

Prior to the Homer Tunnel

Full zoom Kea

All around us were waterfalls pouring from the surrounding mountains. It was just an indescribable scenario. There were also, of course, Keas that came as soon as we stopped the car. The east entrance of the tunnel was at 1270m altitude and in a gradient of 1:10 it was then at 945m altitude to the west entrance towards the sea. Then it was back in tight switchbacks down till sea level until we finally arrived at Milford Sound

After the Homer Tunnel

The Milford Sound with the all-dominant Mitre Peak towering at 1700m from the water stood majestically before us. The late afternoon sun and the haze bathed the mountains in a mystical veil. Cloud tried to reach over the top of mountains fjord, and they covered the mountains like a roof made of cotton. On each rock flowed down dozens of waterfalls, making this a perfect moment. Moreover, there was basically no other tourists who are usually in one of the dozens of tour buses that visit the fjords everyday, mostly as a day-trip from Queenstown.

Panorama Milford Sound

: Dinnner at Milford Sound with sandflies

After we shot dozens of photos, we prepared our picnic with cheese, salami, baguettes, etc. could enjoy our dinner, only slightly, because we were immediately surrounded by hordes of sand flies. Our mosquito spray helped but the little beasts where flying in our mouths, ears, nose or eyes and are a real pain!

Milford Sound

After we were finished eating, we packed up our things and drove back towards Te Anau to look at a DOC campground on the way. So we drove up the switchbacks to the Homer Tunnel, I took photos and of course Lorenz looked at the landscape too. After another serpentine and a further look away from the road, there was suddenly a big bang. Lorenz immediately turned his attention back on the road and had to recognize that we were crashing with the left wheels on the stone steps of a small bridge. Lorenz wondered if he should stop short, or simply continue. He chose to drive on, to get off the edge of the left, went a few meters more. The road had narrowed behind the curve and he had missed it because of the distracting beauty of nature. Shit happens …

It turned out that we had two flat tires and some scratches.. The left side was slightly warped and had paint damages and knocked over by the marking pillars, the front wheel was completely bumped and the rear one also had air escaping. Hmm now what, we thought. It was now 20:00 and thus dark soon. The road is a dead end therefore no one really lives at the end of the road and thus unlikely to have cars coming our way… Soon after, a car approached, we waved at once. The two Kiwi who worked as helicopter pilots for the tourists, said that there was no mobile phone reception here anyway and probably the insurance service would take till midnight until they send someone from Te Anau and be over with it .

: Lorenz changing the tyre while I was fighting the Keas…

But in that case it would be however expensive. Looking at the back almost flat tire, they said: ” Oh that still goes, change the front one go back to the sound and get a pomp to put some air in the back one and drive back or call from their phone booth for repairs” That sounded very reasonable and we piled all the heavy stuff on the right side of the car and thought we were first to take this proposal back to the sound. But against this kind of damage the car was not insured to drive someone late at night all the way to the sound for us to tow or to get a new tire, the price for it would blow up our budget anyway completely.

Lorenz was about to start with the tires but of course a Kea was coming near our backpacks that were now on the side of the road. Now Lorenz was changing the tire and I defended our territory valiantly with the water bottle. With now 3 ½ tires, we decided to take the chance to drive in the other direction instead of going to the sound (which was 15 – 20 km away none the less) as we very well could go along with it according to the two kiwis. On the way up to the tunnel we noticed quite a few struck or knocked down delineators to witness the same stupidity of other tourists… We hope that we could make it to the other side of the tunnel to go as close as possible to Te Anau before we put up our tent up if we were going to call AA the next day.

Said and done and so we went to the tunnel’s steep road with blow holes that you barely see in the dark. But after this stressful moment we made it without problems and so we drove on through the now dark night towards Te Anau. It was pretty nerve-rending, as the tire could lose at any moment so his last bit of air, but we gained confidence in our footsore Goetz and dashed with dangerous 50-60 km / h through the night. 65 km from Te Anau , we stopped at a campsite where we knew that there space for our tent would be a good one. It was now 22:30 and we quickly built up our tent and hoped that we would not be out of air the next day.

Sunset on the Milford Road

The morning was cold and wet and our tire looked pretty flat by now. This was also noticeable when driving, so we had to realize that were not going to make till Te Anau. We crawled the few miles to the Knob’s Flat to call a repair service from there. Of the five advertisements that hanged near the phonebooth , four out of five were for car repair shops. “Well…we are not the only ones then!”. Again, Lorenz calculated the cost for the whole thing and still, there needed to be a different solution. We went to the owner of the small guest house and asked if he could help us out with a hand pump.

Friendly –as always- the owner said that he actually had a hand pump, but it was in Te Anau. But he would have a lad who drives one of the tourist bus and he could bring it, and thought the pump should be here anyway and not in Te Anau. So he called to his buddy to bring the pump. The owner came back to us and said there was a good and a bad news: the worst that it could take up to two hours and the good news was that he knew a great waterfall to which we could walk around to pass the time. We were relieved. After the short hike, we were waiting at the car, made ourselves breakfast and were the attraction for the tourist buses that stopped there for a toilet break. Again and again came the same question: “Why do not simply change the flat tire?” In our response that we already had, came always a smile.

After less than two hours waiting, the pump came and it worked perfectly. The tire had something like 0.6 bar and that had to do for the remaining 62 km to Te Anau. We threw the nice owner $ 10 in his donation box and drove 60km / h full throttle to Te Anau. While driving, Lorenz was more tense than before a first interview. What if the air is not enough …? But it went well and we were up to Te Anau at a workshop. We started already to get prepared for hefty prices. But the young mechanic said with confidence in the roughest Kiwi dialect, that he could try to hammer out again the wheel. We eagerly watched him at work and he actually managed to heal both wheels again, even the “squared” one. Und auch für die anderen Schäden schöpften wir wieder Hoffnung, da er meinte, dass es kaum auffiel und die Mietwagenfirma es bestimmt übersehen würde. With great hopes he told us about the other small damages, he said that it was barely noticeable and the rental company would probably overlook it. Our excess was close to 900, – €. In addition, he also said that we should take the “broken” wheel as a spare tire because the tire had already received a few nasty cracks from the impact. The entire cost us only 32, – €, less than the call itself to the AA (New Zealand’s car insurance). He also said that the Milford Road is quite notorious for such accidents and even worse.

Believe it or not, the guy was able to repair it!

Then we looked around and landed at a hotel, first of all at Bob’s and Maxine’s Hostel. The car infatuation Bob immediately saw our damage and said that he could polish it out and went to look for his tools. He made all his efforts after we had already told him that we would look for another hostel before choosing… The friendly New Zealanders again! In the end we landed there again, since the other hostels were just not as good. In the afternoon we bought everything for the Milford Track, that was starting the next day. In the Fresh Choice supermarket in Te Anau, we met Kristian and Ida from Sweden again and it turned out that they were going on the track at the same time we would. Cool coincidence, we thought and we were looking forward more and more to start the track. However, Lorenz was still unsure, because his leg did not feel quite ready for the 53 kilometers track. But in the end and we booked the overpriced boat for the start of the track.

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Milford Sound is for the right reasons one of the most visited places in New Zealand. We were really lucky with the weather, because there is really rain almost every day. Our little accident the other hand, was a real shock, but we could laugh about it the next day again, even if we had been expected to pay quite a lot to the car rental. Lorenz was waiting till the last moment to decide to go on the Milford Trek or not. It was hard to say because you are not every year in New Zealand and have the luck to be allowed to walk the very popular Milford trek.