View from my kayak.

With New Zealand being pretty much a full day ahead of the UK today was the day my phone was flooded with birthday messages. So with it still being the 9th in the UK it was totally legitimate for me to extend my birthday celebrations into the Sunday.

After the glacial hike yesterday me and Niki relaxed for a good hour in the glacier hot pools before hitting the road. And boy did we hit it hard. According to the AA map/guide it was going to take us over 10 hours to drive from Franz Josef to Te Anau but we knew better. Hauling the Nissan Sunny's ass along the State Highway we cruised for a mere 8 or so hours, only stopping to re-fuel both ourselves and the car, we made it to Te Anau. Sometime after 11pm we set up the tent in the dark.

5:45am and the alarm rings loud. The weather overnight had deteriorated a little and I woke up at stupid am to find the tent touching my face. With little sleep we hauled ourselves up and got reading to attack the day. We were picked up at 6:30am and driven the 120K to Milford Sound where we would begin our kayaking adventure.

After getting suitably kitted up we descended upon the water of the Sound where we explored by kayak for several hours. It was another glorious day and, of course, I burned my forearms after not preemptively sunscreening them. What would Stephen say?!

On the return journey to Te Anau we enjoyed several stops that included the Mirror Lakes and filling our bottles with pure glacial water from a stream. We arrived home some time after 4pm thoroughly exhausted but full of exciting memories. After filling up on yummy food and several beverages of the beer variety we returned to the tent for a well deserved sleep.

How do you top that for a birthday weekend?