Milford Sound

December 2006

Driving to Milford Sound

Dec. 6: From Te Anau, a 120km scenic drive to Milford Sound. Along the way, scenery that could come right out of the Lord of the Rings. The purple stuff qualifies as weeds around here.

In the steppes of Rohan.

Mirror lakes - note the dead wood under the water.

Snow capped mountains everywhere. Interesting how low the snow line is around here. Temperature around 18 degrees celsius.

Some rapids along the road.

Entrance to Homer tunnel crossing the mountain towards Milford Sound. The tunnel was dug by hand during the Great Depression. It took 5 years.

Running around at the tunnel entrance: a Kea - the only alpine parrot in the world.

 An oddity: a crushed car in the snow at the bottom of the mountain face. How did it get there?

Milford Sound

Dec. 6: First view of Milford Sound from the parking area.

Our ship, the Milford Mariner. Boarding time is 4:30pm. The cabin is tiny, tiny, tiny. The smallest sink ever created by man. But ok - it's a ship.

Great weather on day one. Views from the ship are spectacular. Sunshine and low clouds. Though not as low as they seem: the mountains are up to 1.7km tall.

Scale is hard to grasp in Milford Sound. One needs a ship to see how tall the mountains are. The white spec in the picture below is a ship.

In the background: snow-capped peaks.

An hour of kayaking in the afternoon was quite spectacular.

Dec. 7: Second day on the Milford Mariner. Getting up at 6am to catch the views in the morning. The weather changed dramatically - to a more common Milford rainy day. Milford has 7 meters of rain a year.

The result: lots and lots of water falls.

Harrison's cove, where we stayed over night.

At 9:15am: back to port and drive via Te Anau back to Queenstown.