I read about a website called bookme where you buy experiences at a discount rate. I got a trip to Milford Sound on a six seater plane through Air Wakatipu for around $100 off and paid $345 AUD. If you get there by coach it takes 4 hours each way. On the trip up there were 3 people that had booked through bookme and one staff member of a car rental picking up a vehicle. The pilot, Gareth, a lovely young Californian man said the weather was perfect. I got to sit up the front for the trip up. It was interesting seeing how many knobs and levers the pilot needs to adjust. It was a very smooth take off and an even smoother landing. a gps map of our trip

We went up the fiord in a jucy cruiser . My luggage arriving the night before meant I didn’t freeze. 🙂 The Milford Sound, I learnt is, incorrectly named as a “as a sound is in fact a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, and wider than a fjord, while Milford Sound is formed by the actions of glaciers.” We saw a couple of yellow eyed penguins or hoiho in Maori. One of the Canadians on my bookme tour lives in Queenstown and he was saying that they are endangered as they were killed off by a disease about 10 years ago. We also saw seals and there was a dolphin leading the boat back up the fiord on the trip back.

They have a cafe onboard called “Pita Pit” that sell , strangely enough, Pitas. It was yum.

We hit some turbulence on the way home, at one point it felt like we dropped metres but it was probably inches. The lovely Canadian girl was too busy clasping on to the handle to give the pilot a thumbs up that she was ok. 😉

I was really glad that I made the trip and even gladder that I had opted to fly. We felt rather hoity toity that when we got back to the dock we had our own private pilot waiting and didn’t have to endure a four hour bus trip back to Queenstown.