Day 25: Cruising Milford Sound

Today is a day with a lot of driving, again!

We are going on a cruise through Milford Sound, which is considered to be one of the best boat tips one can make in New Zealand. The Milford Sound is probably one of the last few truly untouched pieces of wilderness in the country, and they are pretty adamant about keeping it that way.
There is only one way to reach the place, and that is by car or bus over the only highway.
After that, there is a boat. Or maybe a kayak.

The road up to Milford is 120kms long from Te Anau and will take about 2 hours to complete. It is quite a busy road, with a lot of cars and buses going to and from Milford. The cars are usually European tourists and the odd local, while the coaches are often filled to the brim with Asians. Either way, there is a lot of traffic, and the scenery is again beautiful! The drive up there is lovely, and the roads more curvy than ever. I’ve had a great time driving up there!

Milford Sound is not actually a Sound, as it has been carved out of the solid granite mountains around it not by a river, but by a glacier. Therefore it should have been called Milford Fiord, but the Kiwi’s never have gotten around to changing its name, after acknowledging the fact that some dude in the 1900’s had named all inlets on the South Island incorrectly.
Also, the word Fiord didn’t exist back then, and has been adopted to the English language from the Norwegian Word Fjord. The New Zealanders chose to write it differently, because, hey why not, and went ahead and called it a Fiord. Yes, that is an I, and not a J.
Weird folks, these Kiwi’s.

I can probably write a bunch of superlatives about the beauty of these surroundings, but I will not and just show you some pictures.
As you probably can see, it rained quite intense in the morning, only to clear up after we disembarked from our tour. After that, the weather was quite nice, up until around 6pm after which it started to rain one again and has not stopped since.
This afternoon, on the way back from Milford Sound, we did some small walks and just toured the surroundings of the highway. There are a few side roads, and one even has some features around it like Lakes, walks and campsites. With the dry weather, these were a blast to visit and we even soaked up some sunshine while doing so!
We’ll see what tomorrow brings us.

We are travelling to Invercargill, and will probably do some shopping there. 🙂