Day Five - Lots of Te Anou

Day 5
Woke up early and were off. We blew through Queenstown, even though everyone said it was an awesome place that we should check out for an extended time. We were running a little short on time and wanted to go straight through to Milford Sound, the crown jewel of the trip. This is where they filmed the Lord of the Rings. It is jaw droppingly beautiful. We stopped in Te Anou and had breakfast, and headed to the sound. There were a few places along the way to stop and take short little hikes with great scenery. We passed one called Mirror Lakes and caught ourselves, and decided to turn around and check it out. Little did we know, we see it about 6 times. Our van’s clutch went out as we turned around and went back. Crazy. Luckily, it was a decently busy road, but still in the middle of nowhere. We had no phones, so we asked a man to use his, but there was no service there, either. We asked a couple in another camper van if we could ride with them the rest of the way to the sound and get a phone or some help, and they said no! They said, “we don’t have enough seat belts”, …wow! We would see them a bit later, and they tried to apologize and say they wished they could help, but they were just making excuses. Bad karma will get them back. A bit later, we caught a ride with a friendly tour bus driver who took us to the next stop with a phone. We arranged for a tow and rode with a different bus driver back to the car. After about an hour or so, and way too many pictures of Mirror Lakes, we were met by a friendly, late-twenties tow truck driver from Invercargill who works out of Te Anou. We got a ride back to Te Anou and had to have the camper company call us on a gas station phone to arrange for someone to bring a new van to us from Queenstown, about three hours away. We obviously, then, got to know Te Anou a bit. Walked the streets for awhile, and ended up in a theater using their wi-fi to pass the time and having a beer. The only wi-fi in town was the theater, a laundromat, and the grocery store. Weird. We went back to the gas station to meet the van and it arrived a bit late, but was an upgrade. We went from basically a Dodge to a Mercedes van. It was very late at that point, so we changed our flight (for only 35.00 US!!) and stayed the night there. We changed our flight and got another day. It’s one less day with Brent in Australia, but it is also the best part of the NZ trip we would be missing, and we really didn’t have anything planned for that day anyway.