Cycle: 118km

We got up at 6:30 to eat our breakfast, put our tent in the locker and load the bikes up for the trip to Milford Sound. We were both quite anxious about the day as it had been a 'hard day' looming on our cycling calender but last night I was too excited to sleep!

It was well light by 7:55 when we set off (early for us!) and we started by cycling really steadily. Our aim was to stop every 20km for some food so that we got to the final big climb and the Homer Tunnel in a compus mentus fashion. The Road to Milford was only fully tar sealed in 1992 and took in some absolutely wonderful scenery.

We started off by cruising alongside Lake Te Anau (NZ's second largest lake) and then turned away from the water, through some rolling, green farmland and then up, into the Eglington River Valley, from where we were penned in by 2000m mountains. We stopped at the Mirror Lakes where the peaks are prefectly reflected in the still water. We also saw trout, an eel, scaups and a rifleman (tiny bird) here. It was so lovely Scott and I called it "Magic" in our best Kiwi accents and hten, would you beleive it, a "Magic Bus" pulled in! I posed for a photo next to the Magic Bus and the driver spotted us and came over for a chat. He gave us some advice on the road. most helpfully that the buses are quite spread out on this tourist route and that the Homer tunnel is lit.

Back on the road we stopped at Knob's Flat (Toilet World, inside the well equipped toilet block there were two signs pointing you on to "More Toilets"! and sandfly world, boo) then on to The Divide, a point on the road we'd been 1 hour from on our Routeburn tramp and had taken week to get back to! At The Divide we aplied more 'Goodbye Sandfly', a yummy mixture of almond oil, eucalyptus, peppermint, lavender etc that the sandlfies hate but the bumble bees love! We cycled away from our shadow of bees to tackle the part of the day we'd been worrying about. We were at about 80km and 400m altitude and then dropped steeply to about 200m altitude before beginning the 12km climb up to the tunnel. It was a beautiful climb up the vally, alongside a clear river and waterfalls much of the way and one that we didn't find hard at all - we kept wondering if this was it! We felt so good that we went a bit too fast over the last, steep 2km and arrived at the east entrance of the tunnel pretty lactic-filled and could see our breath condensing in the cold mountain air. On the climb up we had a Kea (mountain parrot) flyiong with us for a minute or two - he took our minds off the climb! Outside the Homer Tunnel we donned our lights and waited for teh traffic signals to turn green for teh east-west brigade to pass! It was really flippin' dark in there! We cycled 1270m and dropped 120m in a bumpy-floored, dimly lit one-way tunnel, it was hard for our eyes to adjust to the dark and they had patched up leaky bits with the trusty Kiwi material of corrogated iron but we popped out and whopped at the view! We had eaten out frog! As we were ready to set off on the descent into Milford we passed the same Magic Bus coming back from Milford and got a lot of waves and thumbs up from driver and his passengers!

The final 16km was a steep descent into Milford Sound and our digs, Milford Lodge. On the descent we got pretty cold and damp in wet atmosphere, the mountains are so high in this rain forest area that most areas don't get the sun for long each day. We enjoyed the irde down and tried to push from the minds the thought of cycling back up it in two days time! The lodge was bustling and had an awesome lounge area plus they sold red wine which we quickly purchased! We shared a room with Fred and his tales of Ryan air and a student from the US. Now which was the snorer?...