Breaking The Sounds Barrier

Penny Lewis Ticks Off A Must-do Trip To The South Island

- Penny Lewis

Aaah, New Zealand, beautiful scenery,” is the usual comment you get when you travel overseas and are asked where you’re from. We Kiwis know we live in a beautiful country, but many of us from the north don’t seem to realise how magnificent the southern part of the South Island is.

There were very few Kiwi tourists on board the fully booked coach to Milford Sound that picked us up from Queenstown early one morning in the school holidays. I was the only one in my family-of-four who’d been to Milford before, which isn’t saying much as I was at primary school at the time.

I won’t lie – when I realised the drive was going to take more than four hours – I was dreading it. But I needn’t have worried. Sitting on board a comfortable coach with USB points, limited Wi-Fi and even a toilet was nothing like sitting in long weekend traffic out of Auckland. Invercargill-born driver Gabe’s lilting Southland burr kept us entertained and informed for just the right amount of time, interspersed with a recorded commentary about the many points of interest along the way.