Milford Sound

On Sunday June 7th we drove to Milford Sound, also known to the Maori as Piopiotahi, from Te Anau. The two-hour drive through the winding mountains was very scenic and contained many viewpoints to stop and admire the lush green forests and mountain terrain. On the drive we got to experience the historic Homer Tunnel that is 1.2km long, and has a gradient of 1:10, which is not for the faint of heart. Finally after many miles of winding tight turns and smoking brakes we arrived in Milford Sound. This fjord is located on the south island in Fiordland National Park. Fiordland was one of the last places to be explored in New Zealand and wasn’t popular until the 1800’s, due to the fact that early European sailors, such as James Cook, overlooked it because they didn’t think that the narrow entrance from the Tasman Sea lead into a large bay, which comes inland about 15km. Soon enough it became one of the top tourist destinations in New Zealand and I could see why. As we walked to the visitor center we could already see the pristine blue waters of the fjord and the overwhelming rock faces that rise 3,900 feet or more, created and fed by glaciers over time. This was a remarkable and unforgettable site. At the visitor center we decided to take one of the many boat tours around the sound where we got a closer look at this unique environment. We saw many waterfalls, fur seals, and bottlenose dolphins; we also saw that most of the cliffs were covered in rainforest vegetation. The tour guide pointed out places where large areas of plants have slid off the cliff into the sound because these plants have rooted themselves on moss, which can easily slip off the rocks due to accumulation of rain. This happens quite often because Milford Sound gets about 6,813mm of rain a year. Towards the end of the boat tour we stopped at the underwater observatory where we got up close and personal with the sea life of the sound, which includes black coral, sea stars, sea squirts and many kinds of fish. From the observatory we headed back to the vans to take the long road back to Te Anau where we ended the night with dinner at the Moose restaurant.