Torrential Rain

 Waterfalls being blown back up the mountain.

  I'm pointing at the waterfall that provides the water for the small community of Milford.

Friday January 15^th.

Woke up to howling wind and driving rain. True to form it was 'chunking down rain' and very stormy. Jan Eric went out to take more photos and I had a shower in our tiny bathroom while to boat was rocking about, reminded me of the Galapagos. We had a good breakfast. Then we set sail for the mouth of the fjord 14 km away. This is where the ice dumped into the Tasman Sea. This is the site of the terminal moraine where the glacier stopped at the sea and deposited the rock and boulders it had been pushing forward. This pile of rocks actually makes the fjord shallower at this point and it acts as a break water and slows the breakers as they enter the fjord. The wind however is another thing. When it is blowing strongly, which it was today, it gets funneled in through the narrow opening and intensifies. Today it was blowing at 80 mph. 

We sailed out of the mouth into the Tasman Sea where it was 'rough as guts'.Then we turned around and sailed back. We saw more waterfalls today because of the torrents of rain cascading down the rock faces. Some of the falls were actually being blown back up into the rain by the 50 knot winds. The water is being blown off the crests of the waves and it is really misty and hard to see. As we went past our overnight mooring spot at Cascade Mountain, we saw some of the 192 waterfalls that pour into the sea. Amazing and beautiful to watch. We heard later that Milford Sound had received 98 mm of rain today.

We disembarked at 9:00 and drove from the terminal back to the tunnel and then back to Te Anau, where we had lunch. The rest of the day was spent driving through the non-stop rain back to Queenstown where we stopped at last night's hotel to pick up Jane's cellphone. This was the only time on this trip that we ran into traffic, a combination of construction and too many people driving around with nothing to do in town (glad we had good weather yesterday!).

From there we drove to Twizel and arrived at 6:30 and checked into the Mountain Chalet Motel. Jan Eric and I are now in an A frame cabin. We met up again at 7:30 and went into town for a group dinner. Then back to settle in for the night. Long day of driving but with all the rain it was perhaps the best thing we could have done.