Let’s start today with talking about Trip Advisor. TA has been extremely helpful in helping us book our trip and I think that considering the accommodation we are staying in (generally good quality B&B’s) it would have been almost impossible a few years ago to book with any sort of confidence and / or the experiences would have been far more variable. In general we have been hugely impressed with the quality of the places where we have stayed. However, what’s also clear is that owners have become very ‘enthusiastic’ about avoiding blemishes on their trip advisor copybook to the extent that we have received emails following our stays inviting us to give them a five star review (in general the best places we have stayed at have not done that….wonder why?). It also feels like reviewers have started adopting the “amazon” tendency towards overrating. Or maybe I am just difficult to please? Anyway, I like to think my reviews are objective (even though they may ruffle some feathers) and as soon as I can find a sensible way to link all my TA reviews I will do so.
It was a strange day today as original we had planned to visit Milford Sound but having visited Doubtful Sound it felt a little superfluous. So instead we decided to ‘sample’ one of the Great Walks and we walked a small section of the Kepler Track (from Rainbow Reach to Moturau Hut). This is a flat section about 6km one way so for us 12 km return and about three hours of walking which felt like enough for us.
The Kepler track itself is around 60km long in total and is meant to be walked over 3-4 days and we certainly feel as if we would do this (and some of the other walking tracks) when we come back. One caveat, is that we need to find a way to deal with the sandflies which were eating us alive!
That was about it for today; we went into town to visit a market which was described as having a “huge range of stalls”. I timed us from leaving the car to getting back in the car and including crossing the car park we were there for precisely four minutes (give or take a minute). The weather really closed in later in the day so we decided to spend the rest of the day ‘chilling’. Reports say that the road up to Milford is closed tomorrow due to snow! Are you kidding me, I thought we were coming to New Zealand in the summer. To be fair the locals can hardly believe how bad / cold the weather is – however, the forecast says that its improving over the next few days. We’re heading off to Queenstown for a couple of days tomorrow so lets see.
We are very impressed with Dusky Ridges Farm stay reviewed here on Trip Advisor