20170121: Milford Sound Scenic Cruising

Saturday, January 21, 2017 Milford Sound

Our Fiordland tour had to be abbreviated to touring just Milford Sound. The original itinerary had included traversing through Thompson Sound, Doubtful Sound, Breaksea Sound and Dusky Sound, but the medical evacuation had set our schedule back 8 hours, so this was where the time would be made up. However, Milford Sound was very majestic and we are told it is by far the most interesting of the originally scheduled itinerary. We had breakfast in the buffet and Ben got a run in on the treadmills, which were situated forward at the highest indoor part of the ship with a view across the bow. You could see land approaching like you were running towards it. It was much less crowded, so there was no waiting to get on a treadmill. President Trump's inauguration was being broadcast on FoxNews, BBC News and Australian news. It was interesting to get the BBC and Australian coverage and compare it to FoxNews.

The BBC did a lot more coverage of the rioting and protesting. They also made a big deal about the scheduled women's march to be held the following day. It's like the world wants to see the US descend into anarchy because it would make a better news story than Trump taking over power smoothly.

We stocked up on pizza slices, fruit cups, and desserts to dine on in our room as we entered Milford Sound. Jack and Sharon shared the view from our balcony, which was great. We remember struggling with crowded decks, jammed lounges and dirty windows on the Norwegian Pearl when we cruised to Glacier Bay in Alaska. Although it was cool (61 degrees) and a light intermittent drizzle was going on, it was comfortable to be able to go out on the balcony to get an unobstructed view, and to be able to duck inside if you got cold, and to listen to the ranger's commentary, which played on the TV. 

The PA system did not broadcast the commentary adequately to the balconies, but it sounded like the ranger did a lot of repeating himself in the parts that I listened to. It was best just to sit back and marvel at the walls of Milford sound, which seemed to stretch hundreds to possibly thousands of feet into the sky. Milford sound is quite different from Glacier Bay. There were several spectacular waterfalls, made even more impressive by the recent rainfall. In all, we barely spent 2 hours in Milford Sound, but we were glad to have been able to see it.

We spent the afternoon doing trivia quizzes (no winners here, but we were within 2-3 points of the top scores, so we did OK), afternoon tea, and a Maori crafts project making a wish box. This is a small box that you decorated with yellow stars on blue tape, and inside it you put a wish on a small note. We went primarily to see if we could scrounge up materials for our egg drop device, and we were able to come away with several ends of partially used rolls of the decorative dark blue tape with yellow stars. We also noticed that the Bingo cards used on the ship were very colorful, so we decided to decorate with used Bingo cards and tape. They had also been handing out hot chocolate for people on the outside upper decks during the Milford Sound transit, so Ben found a drink carrier tray to use for landing gear on the egg drop vehicle. We topped off the design with some pretty gold tinsel string that was used on the wish boxes and a pair of Princess Cruise balloons, courtesy of our room steward, to serve as streamers to keep our vehicle upright as it fell. The contest will be the evening before our final port of call, Auckland.

It's nice to have our egg vehicle done early. The inside contains a pair of ziplock bags loosely packed with hand towels to serve as airbags, and some modified toilet paper tubes just to keep the egg centered between the two airbags.

The 8pm evening show was completely full by 30 minutes before showtime, so we returned to our cabin to rest up, and then lined up 45 minutes prior to the 10pm show. We got good seats and held two extra seats for Jack and Sharon, but they didn't show up in the theater until less than 5 minutes before showtime, so we gave those seats up to other people who needed them. The program was a magician, or illusionist. He did have some expensive devices for his tricks, which were entertaining enough, but he was very skilled at basic slight of hand trickery. He also had plenty of splashy music and pretty girls to keep the show interesting.

We made a quick stop at the International Cafe for a late night snack and turned in. Tomorrow, we have an all day excursion out of Port Chalmers and Dunedin to see lots of sights and wildlife.