Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
For those that have never heard of it, Milford Sound is one of the major tourist destinations and spots of natural beauty in New Zealand. If I may i'll get a bit technical on you know and point out that it is not in fact a Sound at all but is a fjord; a fjord being a valley created by a retreating glacier which then fills with the sea. A sound is similar but has nothing to do with glaciers; or something like that anyway. Who cares? It looks great.
The base for exploring the Sound (i'm going to keep calling it that) is the town of Te Anau which is a nice little town about 120km from the Sound. The drive to the Sound is a fantastic scenic route encompassing diversions to waterfalls, mirror lakes (the lake reflects all orit's surroundings, like erm... a mirror) and rainforests, in fact it's probably a tour on it's own without the Sound at the end of it. After hearing of the recent deaths on this road due to nutters driving on it we decided to get a guided minibus trip and give me a day off driving (Rhiannon is still yet to take the wheel). It was well worth the guided tour aswell as they actually knew where they were going as opposed to us clutching a Lonely Planet and saying "well it must be around here somewhere".
It was nice tomeet some new people aswell although we were by far the youngest, they were all nice and gave us a few tips about where to go around the bits of New Zealand we hadn't yet seen which is most of it.
So the Milford Sound. You have very little choice unless you have your own boat but to get a boat trip out there and it all feels a bit like a tourist trap as there are loads of people milling around and you wonder how there will be room. It is, however all worth it when you get out on the water. Words and pictures may fail to convey the spledour of the scenery but i'll do my best.
Out you go on the boat, we were fortunate to have blue skies which is unusual in an area that averages up to ten metres a year (London averages one metre), although if it rains the waterfalls will be flowing a lot more than they were when we saw them. The water is crystal clear and totally still as you sail on out of the jetty, to the right and left are walls of tree mountains, although it is more like just looking into a cliff wall either side, with the cliff face being over 1000m high, to give some perspective to it all the cruise guide pointed out a waterfall along the side which appeared as a tiny trickle of water on a vast canvas but which he breezily commented, was over twice the height of Niagra Falls.
It was just one of the many little trinkets of information trotted out throughout the tour which added to the sense of awe you feel floating down the fjord naturally created only 15,000 years ago. I say only but when you start to think about it that really was ages ago, but that's one of the things about New Zeland and the tours we go on and the museums we visited; everything seems to have happened over thousands or millions of years and for so long it was untouched. Even the Mauri only showed up 600 years ago and Cook only discovered it 250 years ago. Well I am constantly impressed by it, but maybe you have to be here.
I'm running out of time now. So basically it was great and I am disappointed we didn't also take the time out to do a trip to the Doubtful Sound which is nearby but harder to get to a consequently less travelled.
On returning to Te Anau we took a tour aroudn some glo-worms caves which were also very cool, amzing that horrible bits of larve that look like slugs in normal light can be so pretty in the dark.
Next stop Queenstown.
- comments