Today went from monochrome to Technicolor. We spent the night creeping around the south of the
South Island, through Foveaux Strait, past the bright lights of Invercargill in the night, and along the Fiordland coast, around and up from
the bottom left-hand corner (south-west to you compass nerds). Shortly after we
woke, the ship was easing into Dusky Sound, to glide through the misty, moisty
fiord where the tops of the peaks were hidden in cloud. People were impressed,
and taking photos, but I held my peace about how Milford Sound would totally
eclipse what they were seeing, and make all their pics redundant. I’m restrained like that.
Back out through Breaksea Sound onto the Tasman coast, we soon took another detour into bigger, greener
Doubtful Sound for more of the same, luxuriating in the sunshine and the
untouched, and untouchable, vertical native bush that could hide anything – takahe, moose,
moa… There were certainly seals, as we turned into Thompson Sound to return to the Tasman.
We sailed up the coast a few hours, and I
went to a lecture by an American professor about New Zealand’s self-image, fully
prepared to bristle and argue, and found myself agreeing with everything he
said. Good job, Allan Hanson. The ship then turned right into an
unprepossessing-looking inlet, all grey and misty, and we found ourselves heading
towards the light: the sun was shining in Milford Sound, the sky was blue, and
those high, high, sheer rocky peaks were as spectacular as ever, trails of low cloud below the tops.
We dawdled by
a tall, graceful waterfall, watched kayaks and catamaran cruisers, small planes
made to seem even smaller by the scale of the scenery, and were smug about how
lucky we were to be there at all, especially in bright sunshine.
Tony the Invisible Cruise Director lived up
to his name, and I found myself doing his job, telling people about the fiord,
the rainfall, the freshwater layer, Mitre Peak, the Milford Track and so on. I might
mention this to him, if I ever see him around the ship.
The Queenstown overnighters rejoined the ship, a piano played on the pool deck, the captain announced the
strong possibility of “motion on the ocean” as we head across the Tasman Sea to
Hobart, and we said goodbye to New Zealand. I think most people were pleased,
on the whole, with what they saw here – though, naturally, the weather was
often a disappointment on this particular cruise, what with that storm and all.
At dinner we chose to sit at a table for
eight, and were joined by a couple from South Georgia, another from
California, and a pair of ex-Kiwis from Melbourne. That’s the nice thing about
the open-dining option on cruise ships: new people, new stories, new ideas. The
not so nice bit is that sometimes your neighbour will turn from you as you’re mid-sentence, to join the
conversation at the other end of the table, which he (did you guess it was a
he?) had been listening to with one ear and had decided was more interesting.
What, mate, the (lite version) history of Aboriginal oppression in Tasmania not dramatic
enough for you? Better spend your time in Hobart drinking Cascade beer and
keeping your blinkers on, then.
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