Day 32 - Milford Sound - Misnamed!

Monday, November 5th

We have had a wonderful time on South Island so far, and have often remarked to each other how lucky we are. We've been spoilt travelling before high season so we've often been the only guests ("yes, ladies, you have a personal and exclusive tour with us") or part of a very small group on any tour we've done. Thanks to Barb Campbell, the itinerary she worked out for us has often left us feeling like a couple of princesses! We are met, picked up and delivered to and from our accommodations. And we've become accustomed to it!!

Today we had a relaxing start to our day with a pick-up (from our very nice Te Anau hotel) for Milford Sound scheduled for 9:45. We, and 2 other couples, were collected at our various hotels and delivered to a big tour bus! The bus, filled with tourists  (except for 6 seats reserved for us) had travelled from Queenstown this morning. We were in a bit of a culture shock - a whole day ahead of us in a tour busload of 50 people! It was fine. The bus stopped a few times en route to MIlford Sound for people to take little walks to enjoy the flora and fauna. 

At one stop a Kea, another NZ parrot, was hanging out on top of a car. They are renowned for damaging cars by chipping away at paint and ripping rubber seals from doors. We've seen plenty of these birds but this was the first time I've been able to photograph one.

We also had to stop and wait our turn to enter the one-way 1.2 km Homer Tunnel.

Busload after busload of tourists were on the Milford road - Milford Sound is THE place to visit on this Island. There were at least 8 buses at the wharf at the same time as us and there were 12 piers all with huge tourist vessels each taking 3 or 4 trips per day out on the fiord. Big business. This area of Fiordland National Park gets 9 meters of rain annually! Today the temperature was 18 degrees and no rain so we were fortunate.

Once we arrived (Milford is actually a fiord and not a sound, misnamed because 'fjord' wasn't in the English vocabulary at the time of naming), we boarded the Pride of Milford - a 3 decked catamaran. We had a buffet lunch on board while cruising the fiord out to the Tasman Sea and back. We stopped to view waterfalls and seals.

What I most enjoyed was people watching! They just had so much fun on the windy decks being sprayed by waterfalls and attempting to stay upright in the huge swells on the Tasman! The tallest waterfall we approached was the same height as Niagara Falls and those mountains of granite are pretty awesome! 

But, I must comment that a cruise down the Douglas Channel past Campania Island or, even better, the Gardner Canal and Kemano are equally gorgeous! Milford mountains are higher - more like what we see in the Rockies - and the fiord is much narrower and shorter than our channel. The scenery we've enjoyed on this trip is fabulous, but where we live in northern BC is stunning, as well.

Following our fiord experience, we reboarded the big bus which took us back to Te Anau and up to Queenstown with all the other tourists. The scenery along Lake Wakatipu bordered by mountains as we drove north was spectacular!

We arrived at our hotel in Queenstown just after 7 PM and we have 3 nights to hang out here. We decided to upgrade our room so we'd have a view of the lake from our deck. We cancelled the 4 hour nature hike we'd booked to begin at 8 AM tomorrow. We need some 'down time' to just hang out. Our suite has a combination washer/drier, so that's a bonus for us. Clean clothes to begin the last section of our South Island tour!

The last picture was taken at 9 pm from the balcony of our room.