Trip to Milford Sound

---

We are writing this from Queenstown, where we have come back for some Food. So we don't die. They have no supermarkets you see.

We have just had the most amazing few days down in the Fiordlands. We have made the pilgrammage down to Milford Sound - through the valleys and mountains of this stunning area.

The Mountains and Valleys would make all of Wales green with envy - it would be difficult for us to put into words just how epic the scenery has been.

The drive from Queenstown (where they have food) to Te Anau is nearly 3 hours, and is only roughly halfway still to Milford Sound - so you have to be careful how much petrol, oil and food you have onboard! We stopped about an hour from Milford on our first day of the trip at a place called Cascade Creek - a site put aside by the NZ Department of Conservation for camping. Hopefully the photo does it some justice. It was a stunningly beautiful little valley - with mountainous sides reaching well over 1000 metres. Even though it is circa 22 degrees centigrade here every day and mid summer - they were still snow capped peaks - that should put the size of the place into perspective.

The only irritant was the sand flies - they are truly infamous here and they do drive you nuts. Only the females bite (typical) but they do have a good old suck on you. We spent each evening of the 2 day trip going into a genocidal psychopathic sand fly killing frenzy before getting our heads down. We are still covered in dozens of bites though and look like we have scurvy.

We woke early on the second day to head down into Milford Sound. The drive from the Eglinton river into the Sound is undoubtedly the most stunning drive you can ever imagine. Except it was foggy and we missed it. We did however get a proper gander at it on our return a day or so later!

We arrived in Milford well before all the bus loads of punters, so had a nice wander round and got checked in on our boat - the Milford Navigator - a Real Journey's Nature Explorer trip.

We had 2.5 hours out on the Sound, and it was an incredible journey. The sides of the fiord utterly tower above you - no photo we could possibly have taken could have done them justice. There are waterfalls over 3 times the height of Niagara pooring into the sound that look minute compared to the size of the landscape. The fog and rain had cleared by the time we got out on the sound, so the amount of water cascading into the sound was amazing. On the trip the boat was surrounded by 4m long Bottlenose Dolphins, who swam around the bow and under the boat. We also saw loads of Seals, Penguins and rare sea birds that survive in this isolated area without to much threat from the predators that are the curse of much of New Zealands native birds.

Our drive back from Milford was as stunning as the sound itself, and meant us venturing up through steep mountain passes, through incredible valleys and through the 1.7km Homer tunnel. At one stage we found a Glacier that was accessible from the roadside, and did a kamikaze trip up the rock strewn mountainside to walk upon it. We returned to our van after an hours impromptu mountain climbing (over a 600m climb - it looked smaller at the start believe me) to find the local parrots (kaka's we think) chewing away at the rubber seal on the sunroof of our attractive juggernaut. Whilst other tourists thought this was hilarious and took photo's, we panicked and took into consideration our 500NZ$ bond on the vehicle and high tailed out of the area.

After a night in Te Anau to recuperate (our first shower for a couple of days excluding Dan's freezing dunk in the stream at Cascade Creek) we drove back to Queenstown.

Dan

---

Comments

[amanda]

So beautiful
Hey guys hope your weel! Just finished the London boat show and am off to venice for a few days. The pics bring back the fab memories i had from my travels there, i forgot how beautiful it is! Not too much to report here, my event at london went well so thats all good! Snoged a sexy guy at london so all; not to bad, and the best thing is that stupid spanish man i was working with has now been fired to i have huge :-) Take care love you x

[Liam & Rebecca]

Amazing pics
Amazing photo's I can't believe you have actually been there in person. I'm not sure about the 80mph boat ride down a tight gorge, that might have been quite something.

[Nicky]

Hey guys, hope you are both keeping well .The pictures on your last blog were absolutely breathtaking, what an adventure. The boat ride looked really exciting. I can’t wait to see what you get up to next. P.S have you bumped into and hobbits yet?