Overnight Cruise = Breathtaking scenery

Well, I am back on the bus on my way to … somewhere.

We have a few pit stops planned before we get to our accommodation for the night.

We stopped at a few different picture perfect places and then we also made a quick stop to fill up our water bottles (yes, it resulted in me having to pee 100 times, but it was worth it). We filled up our water bottles in a creek that had the best water ever. Fresh as it gets, haha!

Anyway, moving on to the boat cruise.

Yesterday, early evening around 4pm we loaded the boat for the overnight cruise. It was nothing less than amazing! Beautiful views, awesome company, great food, nice boat and everything was perfect!

We got on the boat and went for a little cruise to this waterfall. It doesn’t look like it is very big but it is actually twice the size of Niagara Falls. It just looks so small because the peak are so high.

This peak is about a mile high starting from the water going up. It also goes down into the ocean really deep. It is the world’s largest mountain coming out of the water. This area is called Milford Sound but I forget the name of the peak but I will figure it out and put it in the caption of pictures. After we went to this waterfall we went into this little bay area and dropped the anchor for the night.

We got to go kayaking or speed boating for about an hour before dinner was served. Our cruise boat had two speed boats on it and 20 kayaks. I chose to go kayaking and it was awesome! It was so much fun and the views were amazing. Right as I was getting done kayaking and heading back to the boat dolphins started to jump out of the water.

. I think there were about 15 of them. They were everywhere jumping all around the speed boats. It was quite a distance from where I was but it was still amazing.

After watching the dolphins for a few minutes I rowed back to the big boat and hopped back in and warmed up with tea and waited for everybody else to get back. Once everybody got back a big group of people jumped into the water off the boat. Remember, they are just starting winter so the water was freezing!

After that fun festy that I did not participate in (other than being a photographer), we all sat down for dinner. I am going to have to say that this was the best part. I sat at a table with Francis, Zaid, Ben, Anas, Alex and David and our table was the last to get served which meant the first to dive into dessert.

We waited and waited for our turn to get to the buffet but we were not starving during this time. This was a four course meal. We started off with bread and delicious toppings for bread. The toppings for the bread were; Fresh spicy tomato basil, avocado oil, hummus and one more thing that I don’t remember. After our bread we got a choice of soup. The choices were Thai pumpkin or seafood chowder- that’s what I got! It was a good choice. After we ate our soup that is when we had to wait our turn to hit up the buffet. The buffet had everything, artichoke hearts (my personal fav), beats, a couple different kinds of salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, lots of veggies, vegetarian lasagna pasta stuff (amazing) and then meat for the meat heads- lamb, pork, chicken etc. And then the best part happened. Dessert. They had about 10 different kinds of dessert and my table got to dive in first. I pretty much got a little of everything and I don’t regret it : ).

Although, all of my workouts from the last 2.5 months got flushed down the toilet in the past two weeks, the meal on the boat trip was just the icing on the cake (literally). So I suppose I will try and get back to where I was once I get back to Australia. I will be excited to get back to the treadmill, weights and workout classes though. I think I will have to do an hour morning and an hour evening workout for the next 3 weeks to work of this trip and that’s not going to happen, haha! That’s okay, it was worth it.

After we ate that gourmet meal I went outside and star gazed for a while hoping to see a shooting star, but I didn’t. I also watched a seal that was swimming up and down our boat for a while. Then I came back inside and we played cards again for a few hours until we were tired and ready for bed. It was perfect night and a lot of fun. Our bedrooms were really nice :).

Francis and I shared a room. Most all of the rooms that were for our tour were double beds for two people with a bathroom. We went to bed fairly early because we had a morning cruise to the Tasman Sea starting at 7:45 but we had to be up even earlier because breakfast started at 7 and only went until 7:45.

Francis and I woke up around 6:30 and showered and went upstairs for breakfast (our boat was a 3 story boat). Francis is from Chicago and her travelling buddy Zaid is also from Chicago. Francis worked at the hospital in Chicago as a nurse for almost 6 years and then decided right about when she turned 27 that she needed to do this big backpacking trip around the world. So she quit her job and started planning her 3 month journey in different parts of the world.

While she was travelling she ran into one of her friends from school who was signed up for this tour and Zaid asked her to go and she said well sure, because she didn’t really have a plan at that point so she came on the New Zealand tour with us and she is great : ).

Her family is from the Philippine’s so I think that is her next stop and then she has a few more stops before her backpacking trip is finished. She has been travelling alone for about 2 months but then she ran into her friend Zaid and now they have been travelling together for a week with TOP DECK (our tour name).

This was our Mariner! She has been through a lot of storms and she is a true champ! But anyway, that was the end of our boat cruise and I will update you on the rest of the time in New Zealand, even though time here is almost up and I am happy about it because I am excited to go back to Aussie land! STAY TUNED! :)