February 21
Today would have been my mom’s 91st Birthday, she would have loved this place! Quiet and serene and absolutely beautiful.
We entered the National Park at 7:45 with overcast skies and a light drizzle. At first we thought it was a bummer that the weather was not sunny but the number of waterfalls caused by this rain and the hanging mist just made it beautiful. We have sailed this before in nice weather, and feel the rain and mist made it mysterious. Our schedule today is as follows:
7:45 We entered Milford Sound
10:00 Exit Milford Sound
1:00 Enter Thompson Sound and Doubtful Sound
2:45 Exit Doubtful and Thompson Sound
4:00 Enter Dusky Sound
5:45 Exit Dusky Sound
Unfortunately pictures cannot capture the beauty and majesty of the sounds. We spent the day either on the balcony or inside our cabin watching the scenery and looking for wildlife. I caught a glimpse of a seal but nothing else. Humpback whales were sighted but of course we missed them. There is a pod of about 70 bottlenose dolphins that live exclusively in Doubtful Sound but for a reason they have not yet determined, the dolphins are dying out. It remained heavily overcast all day.
Even with all of this beautiful scenery we still took time out to eat!
We exited the last sound at 5.15 and at 5:35 we reach the most southern location of our trip at 45 degrees Latitude and the rest of our voyage will be heading north.
We invited Gus and Carolyn ( our dinner partners from our 2008 World Cruise to join us for dinner since Barb and Woody decided not to come to the dining room for dinner. We had a wonderful time and conversation with them, it was just like the 113 days we ate together before.
Tonight’s show was Chris Gable an award winning instrumentalist. He claims to play 6 instruments but only played the saxophone and the clarinet which he was excellent at. But he also sang and that left something to be desired.
We are now cruising to Tasmania and will be at sea for 2 more days.
