Fiordlands

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Milford Sound was our next stop; we decided to go here after numerous recommendations from people we had met. It was a 5 hour drive but we left early after being woken up by an extremely loud snorer in our dorm. On the way we made a couple of stops, one was at ‘Mirror Lakes’, and ‘Homer Alpine’ for a walk and look around. Whilst driving in NZ there are so many places to stop and have a look you have to be selective or you will be stopping every 10 minutes, which was the best thing about having a car and not being in a coach where you don’t have that option.

Milford Sound is in the Fiordland National Park and is New Zealand’s largest of these parks. Once in the National Parkland there are lots of things to see such as waterfalls, native birds e.g. The Kea, winding narrow roads and lots of lush forest and streams.
You cross quite a few bridges with beautiful streams running underneath, and there is also a tunnel carved into a mountain which you have to drive through. The mountains along the way are all snow capped and the temperature here is somewhat cooler than Queenstown which is further inland. Along the way we saw lots of cyclists, and heaps of tour buses which are a pain to pass as they go so slow and are really noisy.

Once we got to the township and the end of the road we arrived in the main port where all the tour boats cruise up the Sound. We priced up a cruise but we decided against it as we wanted to save our money for our trip to see the Glacier in Franz Josef. We did originally plan to spend the night in Milford Sound, however after having a look at the limited accommodation we decided to head back to Queenstown for the night. A lot of driving for one day, considering we only spent about an hour in the township, but we had seen everything we wanted to see during the drive there. By the time we got back to Queenstown at about 6pm we were pretty shattered after a grand total of 10 hours driving… but it was well worth it.

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Photos

On our way..
.. this cloud was on the road which was really odd

Mountain Tunnel
This tunnel was a few miles long and pitch black, but is the only way through the rugged area