Day Twelve - Chasing Lazy Fish

The small wooden porch at Knob’s Flat is deceptively iced over and only noticed when my feet slip and slide nearly making RK flat. I am still peeved at myself for not inquiring of PC the provenance of the name Knob’s Flat but am resigned to my ignorance. The ice on the porch reminds me to take extra care on the early morning frosty roads as I drive the thirty miles to the head of Milford Sound. Basically it is 28 miles up and down steep hills each one leaving you a couple of hundred feet higher than the last until you find yourself in a box canyon walled in by towering rocky peaks and strewn with many VW and larger sized boulders along the side of the roadway. Obviously they have not grown at their current location which means they have rolled down from somewhere on high. It is sheer folly to gaze up at the peaks surrounding one. Even if you did see one tumbling toward you, there’s nowhere to run. You are the pin in a pinball machine and the ball might not get you right off or maybe not even on the second carom but surely on the fourth or fifth or sixth you will be squashed as it bounces off the rock walls lining the road. Must get into that damn tunnel as fast as possible… except the red light is on and it only changes every fifteen minutes! Now one is absolutely forced to look up and search for falling VWs. Thankfully no VW pinballs are careening towards me by the time the light turns green and my tires screech as I roar into that tiny tube of safety in the rock mountain.

Except I am claustrophobic and squeezed into this miniscule hole deep in the bowels of a solid granite mountain is pushing my panic button. Maybe being crushed by a falling VW is quicker and better after all than being buried under a gazillion tons of New Zealand Greenstone? They do have earthquakes here you know. The one lane tunnel is about a thousand yards long and started in 1935 but not finally finished until 1954. The ready excuse is that World War II intervened but this tunnel was dug entirely by hand with picks, shovels, and drill bits. I guess all the dynamite was used up during the war. Amazingly, two teams started from opposite sides of the mountain and missed meeting dead center by only inches. This without lasers or GPS mind you. All of which only temporarily keeps my mind off the fact than an entire mountain is sitting above my head. The light at the end of the tunnel prevents a blood curdling scream from reaching beyond my tightly compressed lips. Shooting out of the tunnel brings one to NZ Surprise Number 1,267. Do you recall I mentioned it was a 30 mile drive to Milford Sound? And 28 of them were uphill? Well, as the saying goes, what goes up must come down. . . and fast. A dozen switchbacks, each seemingly steeper than the next drops one back to sea level in just a short 2.6 miles. . . and an uncounted number of heart attacks, The chocolate rapidly disappears from her secret stash.

We do arrive in time to take the 10 AM small boat out on to the Sound nee Fiord. Having seen Bodo, Norway, this fiord is similar, with steep rock right up to water’s edge, no beach, and no place to drop an anchor unless you have 8 or 9 hundred feet of chain aboard. Sheer rock cliffs and tumbling water are spectacular however, no matter where you might be. Standing out on the open bow of the boat in the cold 12 knot wind as the aluminium (correct Kiwi spelling) 60 footer is making another 12 knots makes for 24 knots of chilblains. Admiring the scenery under these conditions is a bundled up joy. OK, OK I’m carping again but it is cold and when I turn to take a picture of Kris, the wind catches my treasured Port of Milwaukee baseball cap and flings into the icy waters of Milford Sound. Because I was on the foredeck at the time, the skipper sees it fly off my head and does an immediate u-turn. My hat is a lazy fish and refuses to swim deep and so the crewman, Rob is able to scoop up my lazy fish with a boat hook. My hat being baptized in the Tasman Sea will not ease the pain of Kris dining out for years to come on how the guy who has spent a good part of his life on boats loses his hat over the side of a CRUISE boat. Oh the pain and embarrassment this incident will cause! When I go up to the pilot house to thank the skipper he graciously replies it was, “no problem. Besides, we don’t like to deposit rubbish in our Sound.” Thank you for sharing that, Captain. A few tiny seals along a rocky point but no other sea life and soon we are back at the dock.

The drive out through the same mountain is remarkably stress free, probably because I have used up all of my body’s ability to manufacture adrenalin but it is just as dramatic including a slip and slide twice going down steep grades. Kris does not notice, but I could feel it in the loss of traction. My heart skips a beat or two and I cringe. Most places on this road have drop offs of at least 500 feet and guard rails are non-existent here because lawyers are non-existent here. When we approach a Y in the road on the way to Lumsden, we decide to deviate from Ray’s pink line on our route map and go to the very tip of the South Island to the small picturesque town of Bluff. At least Kris believes it to be picturesque because it is tiny AND the famous Bluff Oysters are found only in this one place in the world and for only two months out of the year. Hey, I’ve had my pix taken at Lands End, England, John O’Groats, Scotland so why not Bluff, New Zealand? By the way, they also rightly call this place Land’s End. With the exception of Stewart Island, a mere twenty miles away, the next stop is Antarctica a thousand miles further south.

We arrive in the dark but even in the dark one senses this is a grubby little working port. The one accommodation listing is a hotel dating back to the 1800’s. It has seven rooms and we manage to find it on the poorly lit main street. As per our usual arrangements, I send in Kris to do the negotiating. There are about 15 rough looking fishermen all with a pint in hand standing about the reception area and when Kris asks if they have a room, the innkeeper smiles apologetically and says alas, no, he’s full up. A loud voice from within the group of fisherman yells out however that he has a double bed. Kris asks him if it comes with a beer and another voice says “aye and he’s warm as well.” Smiles all around but Kris opts to stick with me and we do manage to find a charming little B&B on a dark side street after only driving past it three times. It is named the Lazy Fish. Another good omen and although the woman is startled to find any tourists here this time of the year, her welcome is warm, and so is the room. We take her recommendation for a Bluff Oyster extravaganza and they turn out to be quite meaty and strongly flavored of Southern Ocean. Kris is unimpressed. I eat two dozen. The fish may be lazy but I personally am no slouch when it comes to oysters.

I would also like it noted that Kris and I drank special toasts to two of our good friends, Eileen Francis and Ellen Homb, and also to my son Kevin who are all celebrating birthdays this week. Happy Birthday guys from smack dab in the center of the Roaring Forties, Land’s End, New Zealand, 44 degrees and 34 minutes south of the equator on the edge of the great Southern Ocean!