Road to Te Anau

After our brief stop in Bluff, we went in search of our next campsite. It was supposed to be some sort of Holiday Road campground close to the beach. The online description sounded good, but when we got there, boy was it ever a dump! And of course only one set of toilets was opened, making them unisex. Corey said no way was she going to be showering there and so off we went in search of the other campground in the proximity that offered a "farm experience". The farm experience was night and day difference—very well maintained place, nice toilets, and baby sheep! So Corey made the right call moving us to this place, as it was most pleasant. The lambs were quite friendly, especially when hungry.

Lamb feedings were at 8am and 6pm (sharp!) with the lambs bleeting rather loudly, reminding everyone when it was time. The lambs got milk bottles while the goat and adult sheep got solid food in pellet form. The farmer/campgroundskeeper gave us quite a bit of info about his farm, number of sheep, etc. One new factoid was that sheep are born with a long tail. But as they are rather poor self-cleaners, the tail gets bobbed, either at birth with some kind of hot iron, or like these lambs, they get a rubber band tightened on the tail, which, due to lack of circulation, eventually drops off. I dunno which method is less painful. On the one hand hot-knifing the tail would hurt, but it'd be over quickly. On the other hand the rubber band has to be worn for a while, and I'm sure it can't be very pleasant. Another interesting observation was that sheep have horizontally-slit eyes (unlike cats who have vertically-slit pupils, weird huh?).

After our most pleasant stay on the farm, we got on the road to Te Anau, which would be something of a staging point for our trip to Milford Sound. It's a good idea to do this as the road to Milford is fairly tricky (think old road to Whistler, especially that old 13 or 17 mile stretch that used to be fairly crappy to drive), and there are no gas stations at Milford. On the way to Te Anau we stopped at this outlook to take a look at the Tasman Sea. It was a pretty blustery day. Later in Te Anau the fellow whose horses we rode told us that out here fishermen can only go out 56 days of the year due to these high winds. Btw, as you can deduce, most of the pictures were taken by Corey.  She got mad at me the other day for using her photos that she took with my camera.  I don't know what the big deal was, but truth be told she does take really good photos, and I've neglected to give credit where it's due.  Sorry about that, hopefully I've now corrected this omission.