To Milford Sound & On Milford Sound-Jan 3

On Thursday we had a bit of a late lie then after breakfast took a leisurely drive to Milford Sound. We were going for an overnight cruise on Milford Sound on a small ship (sleeps 12 guests).

The drive was incredible. We stopped so many times for photo ops, that we used up all the time we had put aside for hikes! The scenery was non stop. The drive to Milford Sound is just as inspiring as the Milford Sound itself. We are very pleased that we chose to drive ourselves rather than take the round trip by bus, which was an optional part of our overnight tour.

The mountains here are very different from the Rockies or the Alps. Because of all the rain, the vegetation is extremely lush. It rains over 200 days a year here on average. They don't measure rainfall in mm - rather in metres! In Milford Sound they receive over 6 metres of rain a year on average. And that's not snow remember - that's rain.

To get to Milford Sound, you must travel through the 1km long tunnel drilled straight through the mountain. The Homer Tunnel was built starting in the 1930's, but was not completed till 1952.

We boarded for a 4:30pm launch. Our tour took us out to the entrance to the Sound from the Tasman Sea. We saw seals and several sea birds as well as the amazing scenery. There were all the classic glacial landscapes. The Milford Sound is technically not a 'sound' at all, but a fiord - the waterway is an ocean filled glacier carved valley (a fiord).

The entrance to the fiord was missed twice by James Cook when charting New Zealand. It is well hidden due to the winding nature of the valley and the surrounding mountains. It was finally discovered by a sealer in 1823 when he was blown into the sound during a storm.

All along the way the waterfalls were running full stream - back to my comment about being so lucky with the rain - we have had amazing blue skies, but the rain the previous night supplied the waterfalls with all the water they needed to put on a fantastic show for us. Many of them would be dry by the morning. Because the mountains are so steep, there is little to stop the water from accumulating on the surface - so there are numerous waterfalls. If you enlarge most of these photos, you will see them all along the mountainsides.

After cruising out to the Tasman Sea, we returned to moor in the harbour back to the starting point of the Milford Sound (photo at left) - nice and calm waters for the evening! It is easy to not miss the scale of these mountains - check out the size of the boat at left against the mountainside.

After a bbq dinner, we went ashore for a walk along the end of the trail which leads from Te Anau. It is a 3 day hike - it was nice to just have to do the last few hundred metres!

The next morning several of the people took out kayaks - we choose to sit back and relax before our long drive to Queenstown - we have picked up a book on Lord of the Rings sites, so hope to check some out on the drive!