Big excitement for today. Woke up early to call the helicopter tour company (Glacier Southern Lakes Helicopters) for the scheduled 8:15AM weather check-in to confirm the trip – green light! Upon arriving to the airfield, we weighed in and received a safety briefing. The first leg of the trip was a 30 minute helicopter ride from Queenstown to Milford Sound. The views were breathtaking. We climbed above the clouds until only a few jagged peaks were showing – the Misty Mountains (Lord of the Rings)! We saw a few gorgeous mountain lakes on the ride as well. As we neared Milford, the climate changed essentially to rainforest. We were also told that Milford gets 200 days of rain per year, and somehow we had picked THE most beautiful blue day for the trip.

After landing, we boarded our tour boat for a slightly less than 2 hour trip through Milford Sound. We also learned the sound was created by glaciers many years ago. There were beautiful waterfalls and majestic peaks surrounded by green everywhere. Someday it would be cool to see it after/during a rainstorm, as we were told waterfalls start appearing everywhere.

Next up, back to the helicopter for our glacier landing! The views from the glacier were cool but hard to capture via photos. Brian wanted to run up the glacier for better views but Anna made sure he didn’t stray to far. He also wanted to walk closer to the edge, but Anna also reminded him that the pilot mentioned something about dangerous crevices (ever heard of long jump?).
We traded places on the ride back to Queenstown so Anna could sit facing forward. Again, incredible views – just hard to really capture via photos.

As soon as we were back we couldn’t help ourselves…we had to get back to Wānaka (again), deciding that this had been our favorite section of the trip and we wanted to spend our last few days there. We grabbed dinner at the Big Fig again, who’s motto is ‘slow food, served fast’. Essentially, you pick a small/medium/large size plate and then get to choose your meat/sides/salads.

We checked into our AirBnB (which was a cute condo on the second floor of a wedding venue) and packed our bags for the next day. Our second sunrise hike was on deck. At least we knew not to get to the top with 1 frigid our to spare!