Sojourn a journey through life

Back to our regularly scheduled NZ. Milford Sound.

So, now that we're back from Indonesia, it seems like we really ought to get our butt's in gear and finish these posts about NZ. The drive from Queenstown to Milford Sound was truly spectacular. Most of the "spectacularness" started after we passed through a neat little town with a yummy bakery called Te Anau (bakery - doughnuts... yum). Driving up through the mountains and forests in this area was truly impressive, especially as we could start to see and hear quite a storm brewing.

Nearing Milford, you arrive at a tunnel:

This is quite an interesting tunnel, if for no other reason that it goes straight through the bottom of a mountain. The fact that the traffic signals shut down at night makes me fear for anyones life who tries to drive through that place at night. For the record, drive SLOW through that tunnel, wow are there some impressive potholes. Glad the car was a rental.

There was also this neat, um, ice thing:

After we got through the tunnel, it was some more pretty impressive down-mountain-winding on the other side, and a while later we were at Milford Lodge, which was where we stayed for the night. The Lodge was great, and had a nice big kitchen and common area. We met a couple people from Toronto there and played cards for a few hours. The place is run by generator, so quite literally, it was lights out at 11pm. That night there was a storm brewing in Milford, and it was something unlike Carly and I had ever been through. We woke up in the middle of the night to the entire room, including our bunkbeds, being shaken by the wind from the outside. It was insane. The noise was incredible, and it didn't stop all night.

By the time the morning rolled around, the weather had slightly improved, and they hadn't cancelled our boat cruise which was with Red Boat cruises. We were glad for that.

Here are a few shots from the boat (which was a really nice boat, huge catamaran thing).

This shot is of the largest falls in Milford - 160 meters!

This was absolutely gorgeous. At the end of the sound, you can physically see the water change as the Fiord opens up into the Tasman Sea. And as you're coming back into the Fiord, this is the view you get.

Here are a few other impressive falls. It was so windy this day that we were really blown away by the fact that there were a number of falls that were blown to mist by the wind before they even had a chance to hit the water.

We're sorry this is brief, but it's catch-up time in blog-land. Milford was truly stunning.

After our boat ride, we headed off to Dunedin, which was a great little city. More on that soon.