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Published: April 20th 2010
Well, just settle in and get comfortable…it’s gonna be a long blog.
For everyone who has been waiting for some truly spectacular scenery…for everyone who was wondering when we’d see the “real” New Zealand…this blog is for you. If you don’t read any of our other blogs or look at any of our photos, read and look at these. This is the one you’ve been waiting for. And I took an embarrassing number of photos for all of you (ahem…428, but who’s counting?), of which about 150 made it into this blog, so don’t miss the 7 extra pages of photos…it’s worth a couple minutes to sit down and enjoy!!
So I’ll back up to Saturday, when we worked (count ‘em) almost NINETEEN straight hours at good ol’ Rydges Hotel. Both of us went in on a 6am breakfast shift, worked straight through ‘til noon, had a ten-minute lunch break, then spent three hours setting up the restaurant for a wedding reception. Had two hours off, enough time to do laundry and pack for our trip, then headed right back in at 5pm to work the reception until almost 1:30am. Talk about exhausted! These are NOT normal hours for
us, I assure you, it just happened to be one of those days…at least our boss was nice enough to give us a free drink at the end of our grueling day (though by 1:30am, all we really cared about was sleeping and getting off our throbbing feet).
As Sunday morning was the special talk, we didn’t get nearly as much sleep as we would have liked…to say that we felt like we’d been run over by a train would be the understatement of the century! But regardless, we dragged our weary butts to the hall, thoroughly enjoyed the talk, and immediately got on our way for the five-hour drive to Milford Sound. The funny thing is (as you’ll note on our map), in a straight line, Milford Sound is not very far away from Queenstown. In fact, it’s less than 20 miles from where I went horse trekking up in Glenorchy a few weeks ago. However, as the terrain is so rugged, the only accessible way of getting to Milford Sound is to swing in a huge 200-mile loop down around Lake Wakatipu, back east to Te Anau, and up north through Fiordland National Park. Seems kinda silly,
but as you look through the photos, you’ll understand why there’s simply no other way you could get a road through!
Lunch stop was in Te Anau (where we visited over New Year’s), and I enjoyed a ridiculously delicious $5 venison pie…oh yum!! Jeremy managed to find something gluten-free in the shape of a bacon-wrapped chicken breast smothered in pine nuts and pesto. Nice and full, we began the scenic drive north through Fiordland. All was going perfectly until I noticed the red and blue lights flashing in my rear-view mirror. Yep, ladies and gentlemen, I was pulled over for speeding. Geez, I was only going 117!! (Kilometers an hour, by the way, which is only 72mph). We were a good 20 miles outside of Te Anau at that point, in the absolute middle of nowhere, so it was quite the shock to get pulled over. Like all other kiwis, though, the policeman was stupidly nice, smiling and apologizing (as if HE had done something wrong!), politely assuring me that the ticket wouldn’t go on my record back home and even (get this) double-checking that we had enough fuel to get to Milford Sound and back (as there is
no gas station at Milford Sound)! He was so sweet and polite, I almost wanted to thank him for the ticket.
So off we headed (more slowly this time), through spectacular Eglinton Valley, a quick stop at Mirror Lakes, and up into glacier country. The road climbed as we crossed the 45th parallel (exactly halfway between the equator and the south pole), then the Divide of the Southern Alps, and finally to Homer Tunnel, a one-way tunnel smack in the center of an avalanche zone (and the one and only way in and out of the Sound). Traffic was stopped for a few moments, so we parked and did a brief hike to a massive chunk of ice that had fallen from one of the glaciers…a huge arch had been carved out of it by a tiny creek, and the closer we got, the bigger we realized the thing was. So awesome!
I braved my claustrophobia/fear-of-the-dark and drove through the tunnel, which is completely black and dripping with glacier melt. Thankfully, it’s not terribly long, and we emerged onto the switchback-road to end all switchback roads, careening back down to sea level like a go-kart track on steroids.
We made one more scenic stop at the appropriately named “Chasm,” a deep gorge carved by a massive waterfall that is truly a sight to see (and best skipped by anyone with vertigo or a fear of heights!). At last, under the fading sun (fading gloom, really, as it was a miserably overcast day), we arrived at the cozy Milford Lodge and checked in to our little dorm room, where we bunked with a couple fellow travelers for the night (a Kiwi and a German). Just before sunset, we headed down to the Sound, which was absolutely gorgeous, even under the dreary weather. Then we crawled into our bunks at about 6pm and pretty much slept through ‘til almost 10am this morning…still trying to recover from our marathon shift the day before!
As fate would have it, Monday decided to be sunny!! This area gets over 25 feet of rain every year, so a day without rain is a rare occurrence, indeed. Right after a quick breakfast we headed straight for the Sound, where we wandered along the coast at low tide and began taking an obscene amount of photos (mostly of the awesome driftwood that lined the beaches).
Then, at 1pm, we boarded our cruise boat and set off (and the best part was, thanks to being employees of Rydges, our cruise was complimentary - yipeeeee!). The photos will tell you much more than I can, other than a hilarious moment when the boat actually passed underneath a waterfall and a poor little old lady didn’t make it off the deck in time and nearly drowned under the cascading water (she was a good sport and was laughing about it as ten of us managed to drag her inside, but to say she was soaked would be an understatement!). For two hours, we cruised along, to the mouth of the Sound and back, passing waterfalls, seals, glaciers, and sheer cliffs that hurt your neck to look at. The only place I can even begin to compare it to in terms of scale and natural jaw-dropping beauty would be the Grand Canyon. (Obviously, totally different scenery, but that’s the only other time I can remember feeling so very
small). It would be worth it to fly to New Zealand just to see Milford Sound, and that’s not an exaggeration by any stretch.
A couple of interesting facts about
Milford Sound. First of all, what is a sound? The wikipedia definition says that a sound is "a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, and wider than a fjord." Does that help? Because of all the rainwater and glacier melt, Milford is actually considered to be two different ecosystems. A layer of fresh water 12-15 feet deep sits on top of the Sound at all times, with its own flora and fauna, then the salt water is found underneath it to an average depth of over 1000 feet!! The entrance is all but blocked from the ocean by Dale Point, which explains how the great explorer Captain Cook missed it - twice - on his expeditions! Mitre Peak (see photos) is "the world's highest seacliff" (5551 feet) and one of the tallest mountains to rise directly from the ocean floor. It gets its name from the top 1400 feet resembling a bishop's headpiece (having never seen a bishop's headpiece, I'll take their word on that!).
After the cruise, we meandered along the beach again (high tide this time), snapped some more photos, and went to the one and only restaurant for 100
miles in any direction. Had a surprisingly tasty dinner of shrimp skewers, salmon, and tortellini, and left just in time to catch the glorious sunset behind Mitre Peak. This morning was spectacularly sunny as we packed up and headed back to good ol' Queenstown...it's actually starting to feel like we live here now!
So, back in the "real world," I have an interview on May 1st for a new bar that's opening up next month in town, which I'm quite excited about! (Can we say Rydges BURNOUT?) We should also hear back the end of this month from the ski fields, too, to see if our applications were successful up there. In June we will be moving out of the hotel and into a one-bedroom flat about ten minutes up the road, on the other side of town (mind you, this is NOT a big town). Mostly, we're just waiting for winter so we can try our hand at snowboarding and see what all the hype is about. For now, enjoy our photos of Milford Sound. We love and miss all of you and hope you are doing well in our absence!!
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Joe Smuin
non-member comment
Milford Sound.
Amy, what amazing photos. First, I'm surprised by how similar the area is to parts of the coastal areas of British Columbia between Washington State and Alaska. However, there is no disputing the beauty of the country you've shown us a glimpse of. Mirror Lake was great. I think some of my favourites were those late afternoon shots of the mountains in line with varying degree of shadow. The sunset shots were awesome too. I've looked at all this from the Google Earth Maps, seeing it all as an aerial map, but your on-the-ground photography is just the strawberries. Puts it all into proper perspective. Wish I was in the car behind, following you kids. cheers, Joe