Milford Sound

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We had to be at breakfast at 6am opening today to meet our pickup at 7:05am. We are both disappointed in the details of our Kensington Tour and would not recommend Kensington for New Zealand. Kensington did such an awesome job in Norway that we didn't sweat the details for this trip as we were confident that Kensington was doing things right. They aren't in New Zealand. So another lesson learned. We'd have to think really hard about coming back to Kensington. We paid $7255USD for this 10 day trip and it has not been well designed. We are both accepting some blame but Kensington and their Norway provider were expert and efficient. In New Zealand, I am certain my sales rep had never been here and didn't have a clue and the locals are not as efficient. Honestly, tourism is so overwhelmed here that I am sure they don't have to worry about it. Anyway, there is a lot of blame to go around and we are disappointed. We should have done better homework and not relied on our first impression of Kensington.

So we had a 4-hour coach tour to Milford Sound for a 2.5 hour fiord cruise and then 4 hours back in the coach. We learned these details for the first time yesterday from our airport pickup driver who was mortified to learn our schedule in Queenstown. We learned on the coach this morning that we could ask the driver about upgrading to a flightseeing return. He never quoted a price just 7-seater plane or helicopter options. As the skies were low and cloudy most of the day, he wasn't sure the planes could fly and only the helicopter option would be available. We briefly considered asking about flying in a small plane to avoide the 4 hour return drive and the serpentine track but evidently the planes could not fly anyway today.

Locally Milford Sound is considered the eighth wonder of the world. I am not sure I would class it as the eighth best fjord in the world. It is certainly not in the top 3 and I have heard experienced travelers rave about it. I guess we were just so tired, annoyed and put out by our ridiculous itinerary that we were in no mood for over the top hype for a nice fjord. It was nice. We had a cool, sunny day for it. The landscape was beautiful and varied and interesting. There were plenty of stops and things to see. We crossed the Divide between the east and west coasts. We crossed the 45° South latitude. We entered the Tasman Sea (which I could have skipped!). That was to show us where the 2 tectonic plates meet. We saw keas on the drive. Keas are the only Alpine parrots. On the cruise, we saw fur seals, I saw a Fiorland tufted penguin and we had a company of bottlenose dolphins with us for several minutes. The dolphins moved the cruise and fjord experience up to top 5 but that was just lucky according to our narrator. The local operator today was Real Journeys. Our trip voucher for today specified hotel door to door pickup and drop off. They sent a van cab to the Novotel to pick up six of us this morning. In the evening, they just let us off at their office with the suggestion that we could walk back across Queenstown quicker than going in the office and insisting staff call us a cab. No doubt, so they should have already scheduled one and had it there. That is what our contract specified and what we paid for. It is a minor thing, but it is the principal of the thing. Oh, that and spending the day on Real Journeys' coach #19, the longest coach in New Zealand! They send hundreds of tourists on this trip everyday of the year and it seems acceptable and popular! I guess we are just setting our standards to high.

This is a lovely area. I don't what to take any credit away from that but it has not been a lovely experience. The next few days look even bleaker as we travel by another day spent in a coach to get to a train station for another so-called world-class experience which will absolutely not be happening.. There was a fire which knocked out the railway infrastructure and now we are just spending 2-3 days riding coaches for nothing. This is an act of God but our local rep Pacific Destinations and our Kensington rep did not handle this very well. I didn't push it even though I thought the itinerary should have been revamped to account for the loss of the train. I wound up in a dispute just to get the train refund that we were entitled to and didn't feel like fighting to make any itinerary changes at that point. So now we are suffering for it. Clay is pretty mad at me. I understand. I am mad at them. I guess everybody else got good money off us and is happy. And circle continues.

We walked across the lakefront and at a hotel restaurant across the street that we'd looked at the menu last night. They had gnocchi on the menu and I wanted that. It was not that good and Clay had a venison burger since we drove by miles of deer farms today. He said it was not that good either.

We are sleep deprived and a little cranky now. I still have a cold and Clay may be getting it too. In good news we finally got our Oceania cabin assignment for the 32-day circumnavigation of Australia cruise that starts March 6 in Sydney and is the reason we flew all this way to begin with. It is an A1 cabin which is exactly what we had booked and waitlisted so we are happy about that and relieved it is resolved.

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