Milford Sound

So we're back from our trip to Milford Sound. What can we say? It definitely lived up to the hype. It was incredible. Easily the most amazing, mind-blowing scenery we have ever come across. Everything about it was cool - the cliffs, the waterfalls, the water, the history, the wildlife, even the rain! Let us start from the beginning though.

The town of Te Anau (pronounced tea ah-new) is sort of the gateway to Milford Sound and Fiordland National Park (in which Milford Sound is located), even though it is basically about the halfway point of the three hour drive from Queenstown to Milford. There is basically no where else to stay after there, so we too made it our basecamp. It was a holiday weekend (Labour Day - just spelling it how they do) and the town was relatively busy, so the first thing we did was find a hostel to stay at. We settled on the first place we found - Bob and Maxine's Backpackers. Nice enough place. Maxine was a textbook low-talker and Bob can only be described as whacky. They also have the fattest cat I have ever seen. We explored town a bit, did a little hike on the nearby Kepler Track, visited a wildlife sanctuary, and I even let Steph talk me into eating out! Quite the occasion! I believe it's the first time we've had dinner at a restaurant since we were in Auckland, so a good 2 months. That night everyone staying in the hostel sat around and chatted about everything from chocolate to governments. There was a guy from Israel who had an exhaustive (and very funny) story about trying to get a visa to visit the US, a girl from France whose accent was actually kind of charming, a reserved and polite girl from the UK, a hardcore hiker from Switzerland, and the most stereotypical German-Swiss guy sporting bleached-blonde hair parted in the middle and complete with Toblerone chocolate. I wonder if Steph and I are stereotypical Americans?

Despite every single person that I've met who has been to Milford Sound saying the weather was sunny and gorgeous when they visited, of course we had rain. Lots of it, in fact. It's not really surprising given that it rains an average of over 6 meters of rain there per year - that's 20 FEET! As you can see, we didn't get quite the same view as in the picture from my previous post.

We wanted to do a kayaking trip, but because of the foul weather we opted for a boat tour instead. Actually, the rain in Milford Sound is kind of a blessing in disguise, as it creates literally hundreds of new waterfalls. The misty ribbons of water flowing down the sides of the cliffs was worth getting wet for.

Since the lady that booked the trip for us had talked us into getting "the special", which included lunch and a visit to an underwater observatory, we spent our first 15 minutes aboard the Pride of Milford stuffing our faces with as much buffet food as we could. Like I said, we don't eat out much. After that, we joined the hordes of Japanese tourists out on the deck to soak (pun!) in the views. Another good thing about taking the boat tour was that the captain was constantly giving insight into the history, wildlife, and geology of the Sound. In fact (I told you I'd come back with lots of info), as I said before, it's not actually a sound. It's a fjord. A sound is created by rivers while a fjord is created by glaciers. I'm not sure why it originally came to be known as Milford Sound, but I guess the name was quickly too famous to change it. I do know that it was originally know as Milford Haven after the first european explorer discovered it when his ship was blown in by a storm. Captain Cook, who is credited with discovering many places in New Zealand, actually sailed by it twice thinking it was nothing more than a large bay. Also, the huge amounts of rainfall creates a freshwater layer over top the saltwater layer from the sea. The freshwater layer filters the light and causes the saltwater below it to be much darker than it normally would be at that depth. This means that deep water-dwelling creatures are tricked into living much closer to the surface than usual. At a depth of 8 meters in the underwater observatory, we got to see some of these creatures. Black coral, for example, is usually found at depths of 50-150 meters. Even more interesting, it's not even black!

The boat cruise took us surprisingly close to some of the cliffs and almost into some of the larger waterfalls. You really have to get up close to truly appreciate the size of these things. Many of the waterfalls are around 500 feet tall and some of the cliffs are upwards of 1500 feet straight out of the water. Check out how dwarfed a two-story tour boat looks compared to these cliffs here. We also got to see some of the unique wildlife that exists only in this region of the world. That's right, we saw our first wild penguins - the Fiordland Crested Penguin. We didn't get a good picture of them because we were quite far away and they are tiny little guys, but here is one from the web:

We also saw a colony of New Zealand fur seals:

Another native New Zealand creature that is quickly becoming one of my favorites is the Kea (pronounced like the car maker Kia). A Kea is an alpine parrot that lives in some of the harsher climates of New Zealand, especially Fiordland National Park. They are notorious for being somewhat of flying raccoons - they will steal your lunch, tear apart your hiking boots, or, most famously, destroy your car. Apparently they have a thing for the rubber on windshield wipers and around windows. We had seem some in cages at the wildlife sanctuary in Te Anau, and they have beautiful dark green feathers. The soggy ones we encountered near Milford Sound weren't quite as pretty, but they did live up to their reputation. Every parking lot had at least one of these things, swooping around looking for handouts from tourists. At one stop on the way out, there were two particularly daring little rascals. As one of them posed for pictures on the ground, I turned around to see the other one on the hood of my car, pecking at my windshield wipers. Nice try, but you'd have to get up pretty early....

There are days worth of side trips to see and do between Te Anau and Milford, but Steph can only stay happy for so long while wet and cold. Our 2-3 night trip quickly turned into a long one-night trip, and we headed back to Queenstown. It was a great experience though, and we can't wait to go back when somebody comes and visits. See all our pics HERE. Oh yes, one more thing. You have to go through a tunnel to get to and from Milford Sound. One unlucky bloke didn't quite make it: