Day 3: Milford Sound

23 November 2020

Today we have the absolute privilege of travelling to Milford Sound – said to be the eighth natural wonder of the world. And from my perspective extremely fortunate to be doing this at a time when it is not packed with tourists. Usually 5000-6000 tourists visit each day but now 500-600 is a busy day.

Selfishly we absolutely love that there are hardly any other cars on the road. We can pull over whenever we want and not have to jostle with anybody else for beautiful views. Driving is much less stressful for Si and we have pretty good weather as well.

We first travel down along Lake Te Anau and then enter Fjordland National Park. Driving through the beech forest is spectacular and then the scenery opens out to alpine meadows in the Ellington Valley. We stop at a place that was the scene of the Misty Mountains in Lord of the Rings. Wild lupins are just starting to flower – not enough for a frolicking group photo but worthy of a picture none the less. We see hummocks that have been left behind by glaciers as they have carved out the giant u-shaped glacial valleys that we are passing through. And we stop for a walk at the beautiful Mirror Lakes.

We have plenty of time so stop for lots of photo opportunities – from Falls Creek and lovely glacial streams, to views of Mt Tutoko (Fjordland’s highest peak), and wonderful panoramas of the Hollyford Valley. Si points out where the Routeburn track goes (that I’ll be walking in a few weeks’ time). We see fantails, south island robins, weka, bellbirds and kea. And of course the towering mountains and hanging valleys with waterfalls and patches of snow still lingering.

We are somewhat surprised to reach the entrance to the Homer Tunnel and be able to just drive straight in. This is a magnificent feat of engineering: a 1.2 km tunnel straight through solid rock with 1000m of mountain above it (and probably as much below). The tunnel heads quite steeply down and when you come out the other side, it just keeps on going down.

When you come out the other side it is like you are entering a completely different world, it is a temperate rainforest that receives 4x as much rain as the Amazon, regularly at least 7m of rain per year and in some areas twice as much as that again. The trees are growing on solid rock, with their roots holding them together, and sometimes leading to massive tree slides. You can tell a fresh slide by the light grey rock colour, that gradually turns darker grey, then orange moss, and then back to green as it ages.

There are rock slides and avalanches as well, and most of the road is being replaced after major floods back in February that took out much of the road and many of the walking tracks as well.

When we get into Milford Sound we have plenty of time for a waterfront walk, eating our picnic lunches and grabbing a drink at the cafe before boarding our boat for a cruise around magnificent Milford Sound, starting with the famous Mitre Peak and Bowen Falls.

It is still very windy but most of us venture up onto the top deck and are rewarded with views of dolphins surfing the bow wave and swimming all around us. We see waterfalls dripping from all the mountain sides (even though it hasn’t rained for a few days and is drier than usual). We see where the Alpine Faultline passes through with cracks on both sides of the sound.

Our crew show us Fjordland Crested Penguins at the end of nesting season on the rocks on one side of the sound. Then we reach the open ocean and do a big curve round and cruise down the other side, seeing juvenile male NZ sea lions sunbathing on the rocks.

The Stirling Falls drop out of a hanging valley and provide an opportunity for us to nose in beneath them, drenching the hardy few that stayed on the front deck despite being warned that they would get wet. On the upper deck we were spared a drenching but still got a good dose of spray.

Once we got back into the harbour we disembarked and got back into our minibus for the 2.5 hour drive back to Te Anau. It was a much more subdued trip back and when we passed back through the tunnel, the weather changed completely to rain and hail. However, on the positive side, this meant that we got to see a whole lot of new waterfalls that we hadn’t seen on the way in.

Back in Te Anau we had a bit of recovery time before Si took us into town to find some dinner. It is Monday night so most places are shut. Many of us get takeaways from ‘Thai Anau’ (Jo and I get a bottle of rose wine from the bottle shop as well) and head back to the hotel to the empty dining room to share our feast.

Join me over the next few days to find out more about my adventures:

Day 1 New Zealand Southern Loop

Day 2 Queenstown to Te Anau

Day 3 Milford Sound

Day 4 Te Anau to the Catlins

Day 5 Catlins to Stewart Island

Day 6 Stewart Island

Day 7 Southern Coast

Day 8 Invercargill