Milford Sound, New Zealand is one of the most beautiful and tranquil places I've been. It's peaceful, just the sound of nature; I found it to be soothing and calming. It is remote and only has a tiny population but attracts almost a million visitors every year making it one of the most visited places in New Zealand. It's easy to see why when one arrives.
That's the first thing I should cover before I get too far into the post.
A sound is created when sea water floods a valley, a valley that has formed by a flooding river usually.
A fiord is glacier-formed, a valley gouged out of the earth by the movement of a glacier over many millions of years, which has then been filled by sea water. A fiord will have very steep, sheer, sides and generally a sound will have more sloping topography.
So therefore Milford Sound is not indeed a sound, it was mis-named by the early European settlers; It is indeed a fiord. The name was retained though, I guess no one wanted the confusion.
I'll call it Milford Sound in this blog as that's its name, but it's a fiord.
Rather than make the entire post about Milford Sound I've added in images from our trip there and back to add some further interest for y'all. Below are images and a little text-description of our day trip and I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to ask me questions or make comments at the end as it's those that truly make me happy, the interaction and engagement.
We were based at Te Anau 121km (75Mi) from Milford Sound along a narrow and winding road. We'd headed out at 0700 after stopping to check the road conditions; It is often closed to traffic due to snow and avalanches. The drive can take a few hours depending on weather conditions, road accidents and traffic volume and we carried snow-chains which we collected from a service station in Te Anau.
We stopped in various locations along the way the first being Mirror Lakes where, if conditions are right, the still lakes mirror the sky and huge mountains beyond beautifully. Low cloud, almost to the lake itself, made it impossible to get the effect though. Whilst nice, there was no mirror-action at all. (Google it though, it's worth a look.)
Our next stop was Lake Gunn where we parked and took a walk for about an hour or so. The walking track works its way through very lush red beech forest to the shores of Lake Gunn. It's a little eerie and felt quite prehistoric but there were no dinosaurs, just plenty of birds and green everywhere!
There's Faith standing on a fallen red beech tree trunk. Everything was wet and spongey, soft and lush with little creeks and rivulets of water to navigate as we walked. It was pretty awesome, even more awesome because we had the entire place to ourselves.
Lake Gunn itself is amazingly clear and of course I tasted the water. How was it? Get there and try it for yourself, you'll not be disappointed. Very cold and crisp describes it best. We found an amazing spot for a picnic but that'll have to happen some other time as we had to move on.
We stopped at a few more places I'll not include in this post as I'll do a separate one's for them and then came to the tunnel.
There's only a few ways to get to Milford Sound: Air, sea and car or bus. If you're driving you will need to drive through Homer Tunnel.
It's 1.2km long (0.74mi) and was opened in 1953 after being cut through the Darran Mountain range at a place called Homer Saddle. It's a straight tunnel, one lane only, and is paved; It used to be the worlds longest gravel-surfaced tunnel until it was paved though.
When one arrives there's a stop light with a countdown clock. This means the tunnel is open to traffic coming towards you and entry is not permitted; It's one lane only remember?
Below you can see where we stopped with the tunnel entrance ahead and slightly to the right of shot. Once the countdown comes to zero the light goes green and one can proceed as it means the light is red at the other end and the tunnel has had time to clear of oncoming traffic.
Here's the entrance as we were driving up. Note the avalanche sign to the left? This whole area is avalanche-prone and to be honest is quite a dangerous place. There's talk of making the tunnel a two-way road but the cost would be immense; It would mean people don't have to stop and wait in an avalanche zone though I suppose.
Here we are inside the tunnel, driving. There's no stopping in there so the photo isn't great. The inner walls are unlined granite and there's a light every so often but headlights are essential. This image below was taken on our way back to Te Anau as we were last in line and I could slow enough to grab a quick photo.
The building of this tunnel was done by men with picks and shovels; Snowmelt coming through fissures above meant some 40,000 litres of water needed to be pumped out per hour which was made easier by way of compressors and a powerhouse built several years after digging began.
Once through the tunnel the roads are very twisty and there's kilometres of avalanche zones so no stopping is permitted; The scenery is stunning.
Once at Milford Sound one gets an idea of how isolated and unpopulated it is. Only 120 people live there and all of them work for tourist operators or in conservation. There are no shops and is no mobile phone service. It's basically a small wharf and a small airport for helicopters and light planes only. That's it.
There's some car parking on the way in which you'll need to use as parking is not permitted up near the visitor centre unless you're in a tour bus. I can't recall how much the car park was per hour but the machines were all offline so we didn't pay anything. I think it was $20NZD for a four or five hour period. We parked and walked to the wharf and visitor centre.
The walk isn't strenuous; It's a boardwalk and along the way one get's glimpses of Milford Sound. The main post-image above was taken from the boardwalk. Below Faith look's pretty happy with herself and considering the location there's no wonder.
After a few minutes or so, maybe seven or eight, one comes to the visitor centre from where the cruises depart. It's a big complex but there's nothing really there; I had expected a coffee shop but there wasn't one so bring your own stuff. We had snacks of course, you know me, always prepared.
We got a surprisingly good coffee from a vending machine and took a walk up the breakwater whilst waiting for our turn to board.
One can do all sorts of activities here but the cruises are the most popular. We would have liked to kayak but we had to make a choice of cruise or kayak and time constraints forced us to do the cruise. We'll go back though as kayaking around here would be awesome!
Just a word on the cruise itself. We chose the cruise only, rather than the lunch cruise.
Firstly, eating food from a bain marie that everyone has sneezed on isn't my idea of fun and secondly we figured it would chew into precious sightseeing time whilst one scoffed down sneeze-food. Plenty went the sneezy-food option though and I'll admit it looked good enough, we were glad we did not however.
The boats allow people to stand at the bow, on top and at the stern or one can stay inside. We moved about depending what we wanted to see. The captain also fronts the boat up to several of the waterfalls cascading from the steep walls of Milford Sound so it's worth being on deck for that.
It was cold out on the water, in fact the entire day was quite cold. I'd probably suggest one takes some warm clothing, a spray jacket as you'll probably get wet and a beanie. We wouldn't have been able to stay outside if we didn't have these things as it was too cold and with the views around the boat I think it's best to be outside.
Below is one of the smaller waterfalls the captain fronted the boat up to. I took this in upwards-panoramic on my phone to get it all in. See how steep the sides are? Those walls were carved away by ice.
Here's another waterfall below which the boat went up to...This one got us wet. It was cool though and we didn't mind.
The main waterfall we visited was Stirling Falls and the boat went right into it. We were on the top deck, around midship, and still got wet. Those on the bow were soaked, some of whom didn't have wet weather gear. I don't have a photo of that one as there was too much water to bring my phone of camera out! You could google it though.
The cruise goes out to the sea and passes St. Anne's Point lighthouse at the entrance of the fiord which is where it got pretty windy but they didn't stay long and soon headed back into Milford Sound.
It's interesting to note that many people miss out on seeing Milford Sound as the weather dictates to the captains of cruise ships and often prevents them from entering Milford Sound itself. We know several people who have tried to see it whilst on a cruise ship and were not able to do so. We're not cruise ship people luckily so it's not an issue, but it must be disappointing for them.
The cruises that leave from Milford Sound wharf are generally not structured and the crew will look out for things along the way. We saw these fur seals basking on what's referred to as seal rock.
These seals can weigh 150kg, that's 220lbs, and they love seal rock as it's one of the only places they can get out of the ocean to rest. They spend up to eight days at a time fishing at sea and come here for some relaxation and, I assume, some hanky panky.
See how steep it is? Clever buggers. This practice is called hauling-out and this is one of the only spots nearby to haul-out so it's rare not to see them here.
If you look in the middle of the shot below you'll see one of two species of penguin which inhabit Milford Sound; There is two in the shot. This is the Fiordland crested penguin; Fiordland is what this entire area of New Zealand is called. This is one of the most rare penguins in the world and they are not often seen. We got lucky. Sorry, I don't have the camera equipment to photograph it, or anything, that well.
Of course you'll probably see the bottlenose dolphin and their mates the dusky dolphin too. They ride the waves created by the boats and are mostly seen each day. They come right up to kayakers apparently. We saw several.
I took this shot as we were heading back to the wharf. I liked the colours, the blues and greys, in the shot and the way the clouds seemed disordered and chaotic above that mountain in the centre. The cruise was almost over by that point but we'd enjoyed a couple of hours in Milford Sound and the cruise itself immensely.
I'd recommend it for anyone, especially photographers, but that's New Zealand through and through really. Just beautiful.
We docked and walked back to the car for the drive back to Te Anau stopping along the way at a couple places I'll write about another time. One was a cool little walk to some falls which is where I took the shot below.
This river is fed by snowmelt and we crossed on this swing bridge to take a walk to see some waterfalls which were pretty cool, a raging torrent of snowmelt. A post for another time but I figured it would be a good note to end on.
We had a great time...Yes, it was a long day, but it's always going to be when driving to Milford Sound. Flying is an option and we'd probably helicopter in next time as it would allow us time to kayak, but we were happy with our drive and the day in general.
Thanks for looking at the pictures and if you read my text I hope you found it interesting and informative. I try my best.
Thanks y'all.
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Be well
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