2/24/10: Milford Sound, New Zealand
You’ve probably noticed that recently Zhou and I have settled into a schedule where we take turns writing the daily blog posts (I suppose it’s only a matter of time before we settle into the married couple groove of reading the newspaper over breakfast while not talking to each other). However, sometimes a wrench is thrown into our comfortable schedule:
Z: Today stunk. I’m not writing about it.
K: Fine, I’ll write about it.
Z: No! You can’t write two posts in a row!
K: Ok, then you write about it.
Z: I don’t want to.
And now I’m writing about it.
Today stunk. We woke up excited to cruise what we’ve been told is one of the most scenic areas in the world: the Milford Sound. As we walked to the bus station, we saw this:
A red sky at night and tomorrow will be bright. A red sky in the morn' and good weather is forlorn.
This ominous sign from Mother Nature, combined with the weather report for heavy showers all day, did not provide much hope for a pleasant cruise. But we’ve had such good luck with weather for the last five and a half months that we thought maybe our presence would make the clouds go away. It didn’t.
We spent an hour and a half cruising the most beautiful Sound in the world (although to me the most beautiful sound in the world is the raucous cheering after Ohio State has won another National Championship), and for 80 minutes we were forced under cover by the driving, sideways rain. The other 10 minutes? We were getting soaked on the top deck by the driving, sideways rain.
The reason that I volunteered to write this post is because I know that even the worst days traveling the world are better than the best days sitting in a cubicle being an investment banker. I struggled whether or not to begin this post by saying today stunk, because in actuality today was amazing. We were, after all, cruising through the Milford Sound in New Zealand. No amount of rain can possibly but a damper on that.
If you look really closely you can see a hint of a blue sky off in the distance.
And what would you know? When we returned to our room in Te Anau for the night, the skies had cleared up and it had become quite nice. In fact, it was so nice that we decided to walk the two miles into town for a nice dinner out. We both ate delicious sandwiches and strolled around the quaint, charming streets. Then, as we were beginning the long walk back to our cabin… it rained.
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Picture of the Day: Despite all the rain (or perhaps because of it), there was a very high probability of fire in Te Anau today.
