After leaving Queenstown, we stopped in a little place called Kingston to call the kayak companies and see if we could get on some trips. As we were parked in a store parking lot next to the pay phone, suddenly a little old man on a Jazzy zoomed up from out of nowhere. He was selling jams to benefit the local fire dept., and he was completely adorable and charming. How can you say no to a cute old man on a Jazzy? We bought some cranberry jam for $3 and watched him zip over to all the other people in the car park, all of whom also bought jam.

Now, about the kayaking. Let it be said that I am usually right (except if T asks, in which case please tell him I said ALWAYS). I had really wanted to go kayaking and since we didn’t go in Abel Tasman, I wanted to go in Milford or Doubtful Sound. But nooooo, T thought that was a merely tolerable idea. He eventually caved, because I told him that the big boat tours are boring and there’s nothing else to do if you don’t do those.

We ended up doing a sunrise tour with Rosco’s Kayaking, which meant we were picked up at 7am by a girl named Kelly from Belfast and brought to the water, where there were only about a billion sandflies, waiting to chomp on me. We got dressed in some mighty sexy stripey thermals (yes, there were pictures; no you cannot see them) and we hit the water.

It didn’t take too long for T to realize that yes, I am always right. Once we got away from the shore and the sandflies disappeared, it was lovely. The water was perfectly calm and “stunningly clear,” as Kelly said, and we could see down to the bottom in the shallower parts. There were very few cruise boats out and no other kayakers. It was wonderful.

The only bad part was that we weren’t seeing any wildlife. Kelly had promised that if we saw none, she would go swimming, but that we would see fur seals, at least. A couple of hours had passed and we had seen nothing. We all started to console ourselves with the fact that the scenery was amazing, when Kelly saw something in the distance.

From far away, it looked like driftwood. When we got closer, we realized it was five fur seal pups, just hanging out. They were just floating around, doing nothing. Kelly said it was the first time she’d ever seen that many seals together, just swimming around, and even she was riveted. They just cruised around, flopping their fins, lying on their backs. They were right next to our kayaks, without a care in the world. We watched them for ages before we kept going.

After the seals, we saw a funny yellow-eyebrowed penguin called a Fiordland Crested Penguin, sitting on the rocks. He gave us quite a show, washing and doing his best catwalk turns. Then, we saw at least six more big fat fur seals, sunning themselves on the rocks.

Our final destination was the enormous waterfall that provides the power to the area. From a distance, it’s beautiful, but we didn’t get a sense of its scale until we walked over to it. It was really spectacular, despite the fact that we had to maneuver across loose rocks covered with moss to get to it, and I nearly died multiple times.

After the waterfall, we started back to the dock, but the wind had really picked up, making the water really wavy. We got kind of stuck for a while, but managed to reunite with the group, mostly because of my manly paddling skills. The group behind us full of obnoxious American cyclists got separated and I laughed inside.

In the end, the whole experience was pretty fantastic. I got to see seals and a penguin, the kayaking was really easy until the end, and the best part is that I WAS RIGHT AGAIN, which is the important thing. T admitted later that our Milford day was his favorite, along with the skydiving. Ha.