Chapter nine

"When the coulds used to paint the water: not a whisper in Milford Sound"

We wake up in the middle somewhere, and yes, it reminds me somehow of the first day we woke up not far from Wellington. Here we are, more than a week after. We've gotten good at transforming the car into a three-people bed, and we've travelled far. We pack the Chariot, fill the car with fuel and drive away. On the way we stop to try and help to girls that seem to have problems with their car. We look at it, we lift our eyebrows and we state quite sincerely that we dont't have a clue, we really don't know how to help. We offer them a ride to Milford Sound, but they want to take their car back to Timbuctu. So we drive away, devouring the distance between the fjords and us. Getting nearer to the Sound the tourist crowd grows, and yes, it does remind me of Hardanger during the summer. The fjord kind of does so as well. Similar, just...different. There are no roads, no buildings, and the tourists are caged in the cruiseships that frequently cross Milford's waters.


It sort of reminds me of the scene in Orion Belt where a tourist is stopped before he can shoot down an ice bear. And it makes me smile. The clouds seem like big water duvets trying to reach the sky, but too heavy. So they just remain there, floating by the mountains' side. We get on our boad, an the cameras go mad for some time. Than we stop, and we just look at it, we look at the constant beauty scrolling sideways in front of us.





Mountains and falls, the water screams and roars, defendig its position in the world. Right now it's difficult to imagine the poles melting and Venice submerged. The fact that the glaciers on the top of these mountains actually aren't gonna be here in thirty years scares the shit out of me, though.



Above, an attempt to catch the jump of two dolphins in which I fooled myself into believing my olympus would make it. Isn't it a nice example of modern art though?




After a while, some sunbeams appear between the water duvets over our heads, painting the water and the earth with some amazing reflections.



We stop in an underwater observatory, where we can observe fishes adn stuff in a greenish, cool light. My pictures from that part suck, so I'll just leave it to your imagination. When the fishes finally get tired of us we leave again, floating towards the base. A mosquito sits down on my lip, bites it, I swallow the mosquito and after five minutes i look like I've failed some kind of sick experiment involving botox. Well, I don't have pictures of that either (what a shame!), but still, close your eyes, imagine it and have a good laugh.



We get out of our ship, into the car, and start driving. The goal for today is damned Invercargill. And it's just about driving, see the light flashing in sick ways down from the sky on some lakes, stop, take pictures, start driving again, and again, and again.



Photographers need some technical abilities, a geometrical sense for the whole world, a sixth sense that explains to them the rythm of the world through lightlines, horizons and vertical shapes, some ingeneering skills. And a good deal of luck. Like when heaven decides to take a break and fall down on earth.



We've stopped counting the roadkills long time ago, now we're on to counting sheeps. We stop and Jesper bends out of the Cariot to take some pictures of the animals. A bunch of farmes drive past and scream at us. Everybody in this country's crazy about screaming at people from their cars! Ahaha, that's a good laugh as well.


That's the last picture for the day, and our last stop before Invercargill. We stop in the city just to have some food, and than drive up to Buff, where the South Island ends. It's incredible, we've driven through a whole island. And now we're here, parking in the dark and getting to sleep in the chariot, in our sleeping bags. We're gonna wake up looking at the end of the world at dawn. Who gets to do that?....