Milford Sound

On Wednesday, we drove along the beautiful Milford Road from Te Anau to Milford Sound. We had risen pretty early in the morning, hoping to beat the tour buses to the sound. We were mostly successful, although one tour bus rudely overtook us when we had the temerity to drive at only the speed limit along a straight stretch of road.

After applying liberal amounts of insect repellent and dodging the sandflies on the way to the visitor centre, we were soon on a boat trip out into the sound. Our captain gave an informative commentary along the way.

One of the first thing that we learned was that Milford Sound isn't actually a sound at all but is, in fact, a fjord. Fjords are valleys carved out by galciers and subsequently flooded by rising sea levels whereas sounds are carved out by rivers. In fact, all of the sounds of Fiordland are fjords, a fact that we learned repeatedly. We also learned that Fiordland National Park was so named in an attempt to correct the error and to include the word "fjord" in the title but that they mucked that up too and mis-spelled it as Fiord-land.

We also learned that the first European to discover Milford Sound was welshman John Grono, who was caught in a storm while sailing past the coast. Grono, afraid that his ship was about to be driven onto the rocks, was astonished when Milford Sound opened up in front of him. Thankful for having discovered this haven for his ship, he named it Milford Haven, after the waterway and town of the same name in his native Pembrokeshire. The name was subsequently changed to Milford Sound in order to match the other sounds of Fiordland, which we were then reminded are not actually sounds.

The first major sight of our voyage was Mitre Peak, so named due to its resembling a bishop's mitre.



We passed by several impresive waterfalls. Here are the first that we passed:





The slopes either side of the water were incredibly steep and rocky but still had trees clinging to them. Our captain explained that the position of the trees is incredibly precarious; the trees cling to oneanother and, if one should fall, it takes its neighbours with it in a "tree avalanche". We saw evidence of the aftermath of one of these at close range:



The debris of the fallen trees were clearly visible at the bottom:



We passed a rock with a colony of seals sunning themselves on it. Arp arp arp!





Hannah was clearly enjoying herself almost as much as the seals:



On the way back, we passed another waterfall:



We packed into the front section of the ship as the captain drove the boat into the falls:



Here's a gratuitous Lord Of The Rings reference: a photo of the falls at close range looks like the Ring Wraiths. Just a little. Frodo, don't wear the ring!





Once back on dry land, we high-tailed it out of there, determined to appreciate some of the scenery on the Milford Road that we sped past on our way out; that will be the subject of my next post.