With mountains in full view most of the way, we took the amazing road all the way from Invercargill towards Milford Sound only stopping for fish and chips and some duck feeding in the pleasant town of Te Anau.The following day was to include our boat tour of the sound itself. Having not often shelled out for the touristy attractions this was to be an exception as a floating vessel is the best way to explore the waters where the glaciers once stood. We opted for a two and a half hour nature discovery cruise which was focused on the wildlife, geology and plant life of the area.
From Queenstown to Te Anau
The town of Te Anau (pronounced tea ah-new) is sort of the gateway to Milford Sound and Fiordland National Park (in which Milford Sound is located), even though it is basically about the halfway point of the three hour drive from Queenstown to Milford. There is basically no where else to stay after there, so we too made it our basecamp.
Despite every single person that I've met who has been to Milford Sound saying the weather was sunny and gorgeous when they visited, of course we had rain. Lots of it, in fact. It's not really surprising given that it rains an average of over 6 meters of rain there per year - that's 20 FEET! As you can see, we didn't get quite the same view as in the picture from my previous post.
Since the lady that booked the trip for us had talked us into getting "the special", which included lunch and a visit to an underwater observatory, we spent our first 15 minutes aboard the Pride of Milford stuffing our faces with as much buffet food as we could. After that, we joined the hordes of Japanese tourists out on the deck to soak (pun!) in the views. Another good thing about taking the boat tour was that the captain was constantly giving insight into the history, wildlife, and geology of the Sound
The boat cruise took us surprisingly close to some of the cliffs and almost into some of the larger waterfalls. You really have to get up close to truly appreciate the size of these things. Many of the waterfalls are around 500 feet tall and some of the cliffs are upwards of 1500 feet straight out of the water. Check out how dwarfed a two-story tour boat looks compared to these cliffs here.
There are days worth of side trips to see and do between Te Anau and Milford, but My girlfriend can only stay happy for so long while wet and cold. Our 2-3 night Milford Sound trip quickly turned into a long one-night trip, and we headed back to Te Anau. It was a great experience though, and we can't wait to go back when somebody comes and visits.
No comments:
Post a Comment