Saturday, January 9, 2010

Don't drink the water


Today we took a motor coach trip to the Milford Sound, a fjord on the west coast of the South Island. It was about a 4 hour trip each way from Queenstown. There is very little between Queenstown and the Milford Sound other than fantastic scenery. Milford Sound is actually mis-named. A sound is a flooded river valley created by shifting tectonic plates whereas this place is actually a fjord, a glaciated valley gouged so deep that the sea water has made its way in. More on Milford Sound another day.
We stopped along the way at a little mountain stream. The driver told us there was a fable that said if you drank the water of that stream you would live to be 102. Well, I am not one to drink water directly from streams. That is something I simply would not do in the USA. I pressed him on this, but he said he filled up his water bottle there every time and the water was delicious. OK, imagine this, me, filling up my water bottle directly from the stream. I did it and lived to write about it. The water was cold and tasted great. About the 102…

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