Onward to Milford Sound

We have driven from Wanaka to Milford Sound today, with stops at the Five Rivers Cafe and Te Anau. This journey was breathtaking. We cut through a mountain pass at the beginning, drove through sheep and cattle county surrounded on both sides by more snow capped mountains poking through clouds in the middle of the day.

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From Te Anau we followed a river into the chasm of mountains before reaching Milford Sound. Our camp site is at Milford Sound Lodge, which is actually the only campsite.

Miss Maui at Milford Sound Lodge

This one will definitely be getting five stars, maybe half a star off, as we are restricted to being inside the van due to swarms of pesky little sand flies.

I would like to describe the journey, but I'm not sure my vocabulary is capable of covering it. Just some personal impressions:

1. You can smell how sweet the grass is, which the sheep and cattle graze on.

2. The scenery constantly changes and you think it can't get any better, but then it does.

3. The roads are open, long and virtually empty.

4. The snow capped mountains at the side of the road are steep and very high, it's difficult to believe they are real and not just a dream (a deliberate play on our website name, perhaps a bit corny, please ignore if offended).

We have arrived at our destination, Milford Sound Lodge, which had to be pre-booked, or as they said, don't even bother coming in. With at least an hours driving to go back to the next nearest campsite, l'm glad we booked.

The site is beside a glacial melt water river, running into Milford Sound. A walk along its banks produced some wonderful views.

Following the drive, we set off to the Pio Pio restaurant on site. Oh My Goodness, (OMG for the youngsters), what a lovely meal. We both had lamb and it was absolutely delicious.

Luckily, we also ordered the sides!

The waiter suggested we might like some sides, so we had the roast potatoes and mixed vegetables. This turned a sizeable meal into a gigantic feast, but the sides were to die for, so they had to be eaten.

Tomorrow we are aboard the Milford Sound Discovery Cruise. We will all need some warm clothing, waterproofs, insect repellent, cameras, sunglasses and suncream for this one. See you all down at Milford Sound Marina at about 11.00am for a coffee before we go on board - Good Night.

This morning we headed down to the marina, to board our cruise ship.

The Spirit of Milford

We slowly voyaged up the south side all the way to the Tasman sea and back on the north side. The Sound and the sea were millpond smooth. The guide explained, Milford Sound has been misnamed as a Sound, which is a flooded valley carved out by a river. A flooded valley carved out by a glacier is a fjord, which is what Milford Sound is.

Again the sites are spectacular. The highest peak beside the fjord was 1 mile high and rivers cascaded down from the heights in impressive waterfalls.

We also visited the underwater observatory. Due to exceptional conditions within Milford Sound, Black Coral can be grown at a depth of 10m, whereas it normally grows at depths of 100m. In the Observatory, you descend a spiral staircase to a windowed area 10m below the surface, where you can watch the fish swimming and coral growing. As you will observe, it was a tricky environment for photos.

Black Coral,which appears white

Ironically, living Black Coral is white, but the skeleton on which the organisms live, is black. In early days when the skeletons of dead corals washed up on the shore, it got inaccurately named, but the name stuck.

We were joined on this trip by a large contingent of Japanese tourists. They are interesting to watch. Firstly they tried to move everyone from their coach to the front of the queue. A New Zealand gentleman was doing his very best to block access, but his wife got embarrassed and dragged him out of the way. The Japanese then ran around the boat photographing everything and mostly themselves. I was elbowed out of the way on several occasions. We also noted, a large number of them chose to stay below decks on their phones, rather than taking in the sights. We could only assume they were watching U-Tube clips of Milford Sound! Finally they all disembarked and could be seen for the next 30 minutes heading backwards and forwards past the cafe window. I suspected they had now either lost each other or their coach. Fortunately, I hadn't noticed the New Zealand gentleman or his wife getting jostled on the boat, otherwise I think we could of had an international incident on our hands.

Sue enjoying Milford Sound

Me doing my Japanese tourist impression.

Sue and I hiding from angry tourists!

Sue and I hiding from angry tourists.

Then we came across two of the best behaved residents of Milford Sound.

On that high note, we leave Milford Sound and head back to Queenstown tomorrow. Sue is keen to try bungee jumping, zip lining and the Queenstown Mountain Peaks mountain bike tour, she just doesn't know it yet. As we are returning to Queenstown on the same route we came to Milford Sound, I'll keep the reverse commentary to a minimum.

Lots of love,

Sue & Trev xx