Another rushed entry without pictures or video of our wonderful flight to the Sound today with Matt of Milford Air. Traveling in a Cessna Caravan with a dozen others and two (even) smaller planes, from cloudy Queenstown at 10 am we flew over mostly bare mountains until the final range before Fiordland where we could see snow and glaciers outside our windows.
At times I had to look up at them and seated in the co-pilot's chair as I was (based alas on size not skills) I had uninterrupted views in clear skies of the Aspiring and other ranges on the west coast.
The flight was expensive but saved me the 600k return trip by road which we had done previously in 2008. Tess heard that a plane had been chartered to collect some bus passengers who had tired of road transport which would cost them a bomb!
Dinner once again interrupts!
Milford Airport
Banked turn on return to
Serious looking Tess ponders small aircraft safety records.
Crown Range Road - the wiggly bits near Arrowtown
Landing with Pilot Matt - I was co-pilot!
Annoyingly, I failed to record the flight with my tracking app but because the weather was so good, Matt meandered there and back, giving us a good look at Sutherland Falls and close encounters with many peaks, mostly bare of snow. Even the glaciers looked pretty sad. The large Cessna Caravan gave a mostly smooth ride for nervous passengers - no one pushed me from the co-pilot's chair on the return to my surprise.
I have some wonderful video which I will upload to Youtube, eventually.
Our Cessna - a turbojet!
Alternative transport
Our transport on the Sound - what rain????
It's Thursday afternoon now and we're catching up with packing, photos, blogs and word games. Done most things planned so preparing for Dunedin tomorrow.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Milford Sound, NZ
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