Monday, 8th January 2018
It was an early start today and the weather seemed quite promising for our trip to Milford Sound on the west coast of New Zealand. Actually Captain James Cook chartered the map of New Zealand on his first visit in 1769-70 but completed ignored the fjords of Milford Sound ( for the rest he was quite accurate!!)
I was nominated as the designated driver for the day, but driving here in NZ is actually stressless! And as you cannot drive harder than 100km, we don’t miss any of the wonderful sceneries we were presented with every bend in the road.
The drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound is some 125km through NZ’s largest national parks. Well of course we were not alone on the road as Te Anau is a towns were most tourists stay over to Milford Sound so immediately we were following a caravan of coaches, campers and cars!! Our first stop to see the awesome sights was at the Mirror Lakes which was only 56 km away from Te Anau but took us an hour to get there.These are small tarns (mountain lakes) on the roadside providing outstanding reflective views of the Earl Mountains. There were of course quite a number of tourists stopping here……..
Further on the road, we came to Cascade Creek after crossing a single lane bridge. This was a perfect place to stop and stretch our legs and admire the views of the rushing waters.
From this point, we continued our drive until we arrived to Homer Tunnel – dug at an altitude of 945 meters above sea level, the tunnel pierces sheer rock to allow road access to Milford Sound. The tunnel of 1.2km was finished in 1953 and was considered a great achievement at that time. Luckily our waiting time was not too long as this tunnel is a single lane and controlled by traffic lights. But we used the time to take pictures of the mountains. The weather here started changing so we were wondering what it would be like at the other end…….
Finally we arrived at Milford Sound and got our tickets for our 2pm fjord cruise taking us about 2.5 hours with also a visit to the underwater observatory and a lunch bag for on the way. This a most interesting cruise – even though the weather turned against us. The waterfalls, highest mountain peaks rising from the ocean, the cruise ship sailing along, getting close to one of the waterfalls to get a “glacial facial” and of course the seals lazing around on the rocks and the huge dolphins swimming around us. This was a fantastic day with many beautiful scenes imprinted in our memories. So thankful that we had this day!! And even more thankful that by the time we made it back to Te Anau, we had bright sunshine and the temperatures were up to 26 degrees!!!
Milfort Sound is een fantastische beleving alles is nog zo schoon en helder.
Puur natuur!