Milford Sound

Saturday, November 19^th

Hoped to wake up at our usual 6 AM, but as fate would have it we slept in until 7 am.  We were trying to make a 9:00 AM ferry departure for the Milford Sound tour.  Knowing the drive would take about two hours, and we are supposed to be there about 20 minutes before, it looks tight.  Amazingly we make it to the ticket counter just before 8:55, but we haven’t parked the campervan in the correct lot yet, and it’s just not going to happen.  So we talk around, and bag the first choice and sign on for Southern Discoveries tour at 10:15 AM, (using our 15% discount coupon that Donna had saved from our plane ride – way to go Donna).

 The day was glorious – as the trip “narrator” said, “Milford was putting on quite a show for us that day”.  “Gobsmackingly beautiful”, as Lonely Planet would say.  We stayed on the upper outside deck the whole time.  To put our luck on the clear beautiful day in perspective – it rains about 7 meters of rain per year here (that’s about 21 feet of rain a year, with ten inch rains on any given day fairly common).  The longest it has not rained is 9 days.  So our beautiful sunny day is a rare occurrence.  Milford Sound is also popular, receiving about half a million visitors a year – but most of them are crammed into the peak summer months of January and February – so although there are a lot of people here, our tour boat is only about half full.  We also did briefly look at tours of Doubtful Sound (3 times the length and 10 times the area of Milford Sound), but our finances didn’t allow us to spring for the big bucks for that tour. $265/person for the day trip - $675/person for the overnighter.  We were not disappointed in the least with Milford Sound, however.  What I would really love to do is kayak or sail the sounds.  So I guess it’s save up the nickels and come back some day.

Milford and Doubtful Sounds are misnamed, as they aren’t sounds (carved by a river, and not as steep or dramatic), but are more properly fiords (carved by a glacier, and very steep and dramatic).  The national park is called Fjordland, so that is right, but the Kiwi’s went with a different spelling of fiord.  Anyway, whatever it’s called or supposed to be called, it was indeed beautiful.  We spent the entire time of our cruise with a delightful couple, Jan and Phil Ingram from a NW suburb of London.  They were teachers (Phil – science; Jan – English) who had just retired in July.  They are “pros” in the house swapping method of accomodations all over the world.  They use Home for Exchange and have had such good luck, they would never do anything but home exchange when traveling.  They have been to many places all over the world, and had even already spent considerable time in Denver and Winter Park, CO.  Donna and Jan really hit it off, visiting the whole time of our 2 hour 15 minute cruise of Milford Sound (while taking in the spectacular scenery), while Phil and I took lots of photos.  We exchanged e-mail addresses, and Donna and Jan have already e-mailed a few times since we got back.  If we could get someone to take the dogs, a home exchange might work great.  Jan and Phil had exchanged their home with a Kiwi from Wanaka.  Donna noted that “meeting people while traveling is so much fun”.  Of course, everybody loves Donna (didn’t they make a TV show about her?).

Here are the pics from Milford Sound.

Donna and Jan

Jan and Phil Ingram

We finished our Milford Sound cruise at 12:30, knocked around the area for a little while, and  then drove to the trailhead for the Key Summit hike, which is at the beginning of the Routeburn Trek.  By the time we had driven there, eaten lunch, etc., it was 3 PM for the start of the hike.  It was yet another beautiful hike, surrounded by jagged, glaciated peaks everywhere you looked.  Mostly still clear, but starting to cloud up, and just as we finished the hike about 5:30, it began to drizzle.  Drove back to TeAnau, where we stayed at a top ten holiday park in town.  Another very full and spectacular day.  Here are some pics from the Key Summit hike.

Next day near Manapouri in the rein