It was going to take us 2 hours to cross the pass to Milford so it was another early morning start, and the fog was down! We could hardly see a 100^ft infront of us! About an hour into our drive we came to a tunnel going through the mountain. The Homer Tunnel is a 1.1_km tunnel that was dug by 5 men with picks, shovels and wheel barrows. Not surprisingly, it took them 18 years whole to complete! Driving through it you could tell it was dug by hand, it was rather tight, and i'm glad i didn't meet anthing coming the other way! When we got to the other side of the mountain the weather had completely changed. It was an amazing day, the sun was out and there were no clouds in the sky. Appartently this is quite unusual for Milford as they have 7-8_m of rain a year! The drive its self was amazing! It seems there is another completely awe-inspiring view around every corner . Milford Sound is a fiord formed by glaciers in the last ice age. They do boat tours round the fiord showing you all the interesting points, like a major falut line between the Austrailasian and Pacific plates, and waterfalls that tumble down from the huge mountains towering above. Because the cliff faces are so sheer, the boats can get to within a few feet of them, enabling us to get right up close to the waterfalls and wildlife. After a 2 hour trip around the fiord the boat dropped us off at a floating discovery centre they had attached to side of one of the cliffs. Within the centre there was an underwater observatory 10m below the surface, it was a cylinder with steps leading to the bottom where they had twenty windows looking out into the gloom. So after a bit of a talk on how the fiord was made and who discovered it, they took us down below. Due to the amount of rain fall and spring water going into the fiord from all the waterfalls, there is a layer of fresh water a meter thick on top of the salt water, which reaches depths of over 300m. This creates a similar underwater enviroment at a depth of 10m, as it would be at 100m, enabling creatures of the depths to live 10_m below the surface. For example, the rare Black Coral. The living coral itself is white, but the skeleton is black, which is normally found at around 100m. Under half of the windows they have planted these corals in underwater window boxes, to promote growth and create a small reef for other sea creatures. You can also see loads of fish, crustatceans and starfish. Once we had finished at the centre, they nipped us back to the harbor on a little boat, and we made the epic drive back, stopping off at The Chasm. This is a waterfall that dissapears into a deep chasm, quite spectacular but we were more interested in the visitor we got as soon as we parked up in the car park. I was just above to get out of the van and a Kea landed on my wingmirror! Kea's are the only alpine parrots in the world, they are extremly intelligent and reknowed for being very mischeavious and ripping the rubber off cars with ease using thier huge beaks. Luckily I think Irene got away with no injurys, although the Kea was sat on top of her waiting for us when we came back. Now we have a 3hr drive to Queenstown to do. We ended up staying at a DOC campsite just outside Queenstown as it was past 7_pm by the time we got there.