Fijord National Park & Millford Sound

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An Unbelievable Day!

If the objective of this ATW (Around-The-World) journey was to find the most stunning scenary on the planet, then we may as well pack our bags and head for home tomorrow.

Today, on the Southern Island of New Zealand, along the southwest coast we discovered a place called Fijord National Park and Millford Sound. We have been to Yosemite and Glacier National Park and it's sister park, Canada's Waterton Lakes which are all areas that demonstrate the remarkable power of ice age glaciers that create mountain & valley formations.

Unlike anything we have ever seen, the shear cliff-like penetration of the 5,000 foot high mountains that plummet over 1,000 feet underwater into Millford Sound was the most stunning scene we have ever seen. All the North American glacier parks have their highlights; Half Dome in Yosemite, the view from the "Going to the Sun Road" which winds through Glacier National Park; however, we have never seen so much stunning scenary around each and every corner hour after hour as we saw today.

We left Queenstown by bus at 7:30am, dark and about 35 degrees - we were dressed warm. We traveled east towards the Tasman Sea coast as dawn rose above the snow covered mountains surrounding the 85-mile long Wakatipu lake - a glacier lake so blue it is impossible to explain in words.

We traveled on for several hours to Fijordland National Park through sheep country (4 million kiwis - 40 million sheep), cattle ranches and - to our amazement - mile after mile of "deer farms" whose venison is managed like beef in America for distribution throughout Europe and Asia until finally, we were humbled by the scenary.

After the bus trip we boarded The Spirit of Millford Sound ferry to cruise the Millford fijord for a couple of hours. We were inside, comfortable and fed a good meal. After we were done with the cruise, the bus took us to the local airport for a flight back to Queenstown. It was a small plane, smaller than either of us had been on and we flew back through the Fijord National Park at peak height, close to mountains and back to Queenstown - all in about 40 minutes where a taxi was waiting to take us back to our hotel. Pilot Steve was awesome (see picture). A new first for the Arbuckles!

We walked downtown and had a nice dinner at the Surreal restaurant which was excellent. A walk back to the Crowne Plaza through delightful quaint Queenstown (temp in the high 30s!) to settle in for tomorrow's ongoing adventure. We travel back to the northern west coast mountains (Mt. Cook) home of the "Kingdom of Rohon" of middle earth Lord of the Rings fame, then on to Christchurch where we overnight before the journey to the northeast coast of Australia and our snorkle adventure exploring the Great Barrier Reef - we will be glad to be back in the warmth of the equator!

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Photos

Early sunrise outside of Queenstown
Through early morning sunlight, mountains appear.

By mid-morning snow covered mountains...
...are all around us!

In the shadow of giants
Fijordland National Park is awesome!

Millford Sound
On board the Spirit of Millford Sound.

Fijordland National Park...
...from the air!

Pilot Steve was great to us!
Took us to within 25 feet of our taxi!