On Friday, we drove from Queenstown to Te Anau, the gateway to Fiordland National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the  largest of New Zealand’s 13 national parks, encompassing 10% of the country’s land mass, the Southern Alps, and 14 fjords. Our plan was to visit two of the fjords, those accessible by vehicle: Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound.

It was a bright, bright sun-shiny day, as the song goes, as we headed south around the bottom of Lake Wakatipu, then across the rolling pasture lands of the Otago and Southland Regions.

We spent a rainy Saturday in Te Anau, Labor Day Weekend here. It was touch and go regarding our ability to drive to Milford Sound.

There’s only one road to the sound, that being the Milford Road from Te Anau, and it was closed Saturday as a result of avalanches caused by the storm washing out parts of the roadway. We kept checking the road’s status on the internet throughout the day, and were relieved when it was announced that the road was expected to be cleared and open for traffic by 10:00 the next morning.

We headed out Sunday after breakfast, stopping just a couple miles south of the Homer Tunnel to stretch our legs.

As we parked, we noticed that the car next to us had several birds under and around it, apparently looking for tourists who can’t read English.

The birds were Kea, the only true alpine parrot species in the world. They are endemic to the South Island of New Zealand, the government of which has designated the species as endangered, perhaps 5,000 still in the wild.

Kea are reputed to be very smart and curious. Locals say they have the intelligence of a 5-year-old child.

Once the car next to us moved out, three of the Kea that had been underneath it made their way over to us.

These three are obviously acclimated to humans. They hopped up on the roof and posed for a photo shoot.

Once the birds realized that we weren’t going to feed them, they decided it was time to show off, taking turns surfing down our windshield. A group of Kea, by the way, is fittingly called a “circus.”

Eventually, they tired of us and moved on to the next arriving vehicle. We climbed back into our car and continued our journey north.

After a brief interlude for southbound traffic to clear, we passed through the one-lane Homer Tunnel (3/4 mile long, elev. 3,100 ft., built in 1953) and into Milford Sound.

A half hour later, we arrived at our destination. Milford Sound Lodge. We spent two nights here and were not disappointed. Here’s the view from inside our bungalow:

Apparently, the Kea from the carpark sent word by jungle telegraph that we had checked in.

One of their cousins was assigned to keep an eye on us.