Milford Sound

The second leg of our South Island trip took us to Milford Sound. Considered a 'must-see' of New Zealand tourism, this sound (or more correctly, Fiord) is part of Fiordland, on the Southwest coast of the South Island. It's only 60km from Queenstown as the crow flies, but to reach the sound by road requires a good 4.5 hour drive. Therefore, we had to hit the road bright and early.

There are several nice hikes on the way into Milford sound, and we were determined to do one of them. Justin had decided on a hike called Gertrude Saddle, one that affords stunning views of Milford Sound from a pass between two nearby mountains. However, like most hikes in NZ, both the hike and the views are very weather dependant. We stopped at the Department of Conservation information site on our way into the sound (and out of civilization), and were told that, based on the day's weather forecast, doing the hike was not advised. Apparently, it had the potential to be very slippery, and the views probably wouldn't be great.

Of course, that just made us more determined to do it. 

Emma began to have second thoughts after the signs became more and more fearmonger-y. This one suggests turning back if you didn't bring ice crampons (we didn't).

 To be honest, it felt a bit like being in Mordor. Just a lot of grey gloom.

At this point, it looked like we were almost at the top of the saddle.

But in actuality, we were just at this lake. We decided against going for a dip.

Somebody had pitched a tent right beside the lake. We never came across the occupants, so we're not sure whether they enjoyed their stay in this cold, blustery desolation.

Conditions didn't really improve from there on out. We came upon some more challenging terrain, but luckily there were chains to help with the climb.

After a bit of a 'blind-leading-the-blind-through-fog' episode, we got to what we assumed was the Saddle. The view looked like this. 

We got a bit lucky, and the fog actually cleared decently while we were up there. Here's the 'after' view. The water in Milford sound is waaaay off in the distance.

By this time, we were soaked from all of the rain ad fog, and so we clambered back to the car as quickly as we safely could. Our running shoes were squelching with water by the time we got back. Fortunately, it was only an extra 20 minutes of driving to get to Milford Sound. The 'town' of Milford Sound consists of about 15 people (all in the ecotourism business) and one restaurant/pub. So, that's where we went for dinner that night. It felt so good to finally be warm and dry...and they were even playing both the Cricket World Cup and Champion's League games. Milford definitely knew how to keep us happy!

We wandered home from the pub as the sun was going down and managed to snap a couple of pictures without too much cloud cover.

The next morning, we were up bright and early for a cruise through the sound. Because it's actually created from glacial activity (rather than a river), we learned that the correct name for Milford Sound is actually Milford Fiord.

Justin and our boat.

The view looking into the sound from the Tasman sea.

We had another wildlife sighting while on the cruise. Believe it or not, there is a juvenile New Zealand fur seal on the top of the rock, and another one just to the right of the rock. We recognize that we probably need to invest in a camera with slightly more zoom if we want people to believe that we have actually seen animals.

From Milford Sound, we hopped in the car and began the 5 hour drive to Wanaka. Details of that leg of the trip to come soon.