Milford Sound

The day had finally arrived, the big trip to Milford Sound, something we have been planning and looking forward to since the moment we decided to make this trip a reality. Our original plan was to go overnight on Tuesday and return Wednesday, however, due to New Zealand Day on Wed. the trip was booked and we had to reschedule for Monday to Tuesday. Our coach and driver/guide, Skip, picked us up from our hostel that morning and we were off on the 5+hr drive. As the crow flies our destination was not 100km away, yet given the topography our route takes us a bit out of the way.

Driving along Lake Wakatipu to start and then through rolling hills and across smallish mountains of the northern Southland (love that), we pulled into our first main stop, Te Anau. This town is located at the south end of a lake of the same name and is the main jumping off point for most Fiordland activities. Our first pie of the trip, steak and cheese, pretty good actually, some socks because our feet were freezing and we were off towards our destination.

As you can see from these pictures, there are plenty of sights along the way, however with the sun where it was in the sky the pictures did not all turn out as we may have liked. Not a problem, as we would gladly trade sunny skies and beautiful weather for pictures that wouldn't be perfect anyway. One of the first stops was the Monkey River in the Hollyford Valley where we filled our nalgene with cool mountain water.



We arrived into Milford Village, pop. 200 in the summer and 90 in the winter. On the boat, and anchors away, we were off cruising up, or is it down, or out, the fiord. A quick safety briefing as is customary for these sorts of adventures and we found ourselves up on the deck taking in the stunning scenery with our fellow passengers.



Because we chose to go for an overnight cruise we were lucky to see very few other people out on the water as it was nearly 5:00pm at this point, and the day cruises had long since headed home. A leisurely ride towards the Tasman sea took us past waterfalls, and rock faces that were nearly vertical as they climbed out of the water up towards the sky. It is hard to describe the beauty of this places, but I do hope that some of our pictures and videos will allow you to choose your own superlatives. Here's a picture of the "old people's" boat. They had their own cabins and bathrooms ensuite. We had a room with 4 bunks (but no bunkmates!) and bathrooms in the back of the boat. Other than that, they were pretty similar boats.



Once we had made it to the mouth of the fiord we dropped anchor and spent the next few hours kayaking around a beautiful bay and taking in the (insert superlative) dankness (reeder!) of our surroundings. It was clear early on that a handful of kayakers wanted to play bumper boats and we were having none of that, so we made our way to the waters edge and began to look for native wildlife.

All credit to Michelle for the spotting of the trip, a Fiordland Crested Penguin wandering around on the rocks. The penguin jumped from rock to rock, ducked behind a boulder, and when he reappeared he was on the other side of the boulder just looking like a happy little guy (or gal). A few more glances around and he was back in the water, swimming away. Since we were on our kayaks and didn't have our camera, here's a stock photo:



The penguins are only in Milford Sound for 2 weeks this time of year and they are molting, so they don't often just sit on the beach. They come back in June for 5 months and that's the main viewing time for them. So, we were very lucky to see the little guy (or gal).

After kayaking, Evan decided to go for a swim in the frigid water. It was around 60 degrees and he swam for about 15 minutes. Crazy boy! It was so cold that he couldn't even spit out a sentence to verbalize how cold it was.



Dinner was mushroom and capsicum soup (quite good, actually!), pork with apples and veggies and peach cobbler for dessert. After dinner we hung out on the deck and enjoyed the view and the millions of stars. Never have we seen so many stars. Can someone please check if we can see the same Orion constellation in the North and South hemispheres? Michelle is 100% positive that it is the same constellation, but our guide is 100% positive that there is no way you can see it in both hemispheres.





Evan woke up at 5:45am to film his own version of Sunrise Earth. Not a bad locale with the fiords and glaciers surrounding us. It's on the video camera, so you'll have to wait until we get home to view it, but here's a photo from the crack of dawn:



We took the bus back to Queenstown and arrived mid-afternoon. We're going to check out Queenstown's disc golf course this evening and then just relax tomorrow. NZ is winding down as we fly to Melbourne on Friday. That's all for now!