Milford Sound

Milford Sound, the stunningly beautiful fjord down at the south end of the South Island, is a funny little place.

For one thing, it has some of the most awful weather in a land of already unpredictable weather. I think they average about 50 fine sunny days a year and the rest are less suitable for taking a boat trip to see the crashing waterfalls and the mountains rising straight up out of the sea.

For another thing, it seems impossibly low-key. There is a Milford sound town or village, but it doesn't really suport tourism. Harvesting something (lobsters, mussels perhaps? some sort of seafood anyhow,) is the real industry here. I think they have one (permanently-full) hotel and perhaps a dozen houses for ships' captains and hotel managers and cannery plant officials. I think I also heard that the local fish-canning factory manager was our boat captain, actually. Whether this is a drive to save on housing, I don't know...

For another point, it seems incredibly far away from everything else. To get to Milford Sound you have to drive for two hours from the nearest town, which is exactly what we did. I know this is the sort of drive some Americans make to pick up their newspaper in the mornings, but for me it seemed amazingly isolated. We stayed in Te Anau, in fasct we stayed for whole wet day, before attempting the drive down. It didn't help. We got one of the other 305 days, and couldn't really see the full splendour of Mitre peak (well, the bottom part of it was pretty splendid...)

but apart from that it was still a lovely trip. The 2 -hour drive down (2 hours!, that's like staying in cambridge or somewhere, to visit Big Ben!) was actually lovely, chock-full of glacial valleys and chuckling streams. In one place we even came across a vast meadow of wonderful, tall plants with bell-shaped flowers (sorry, botany never was my strong point) and had to stop for ages getting cute baby photos. It was also pretty easy to see the local wildlife - Keas are large mountain parrots and these guys were everywhere. very sweet, but I've heard their beaks are made for chomping though lamb-bones, so I suppose a scrawny finger like mine would offer no great resistance. This last came to mind when they landed on the car-roof demanding to be fed.

Finally down at the water's edge we entered the hangar-like ship terminal, and arranged a cruise. This was a a little dimal at first, but actually we got right up close to (NZ fur) seals and as for the watefalls, the captain actually nosed the boat underneath one or two until the water was thundering right onto the bow. It was all very dramatic. Due to the weather, the mountain peaks were lost to us, but the steep, smooth cliffs falling straight into the water are pretty impressive by themselves. After cruising for a while, enjoying never ending refills of hot chocolate (nice touch, that - the kiwis are so good at this sort of thing) our time was up, so we exchanged the boat for our car (we tried walking a little but found that apart from the famous Milford Track, there was really nowhere to go,) and headed home to Te Anau. This moment of turning North was the last turning point for us. From here onwards we were headed home (even if we still had a couple of weeks left.)