Fiordlands National Park

We left Dave's just after 8, a little bit later than we hoped. It was still the quickest we'd gotten ready and left our sleeping location since getting the van though. We had some quick breakfast and Dave made us a coffee which was much nicer than the last two days when we realized our water hadn't stayed hot and the instant coffee was cold (I mean, instant coffee is crap when it's hot, so much worse cold). The drive to Te Anau was about 3 and a half hours, but we decided to bypass the village to start with and head up towards Milford Sound and do a walk along Milford Road in Fiordsland National Park so the drive was a bit longer. The drive was mostly rolling green hills of farmland pastures with the occasional section of sheep and cows. It also rained the first half of the trip, but thankfully dried up as we got closer to the west coast.

We turned off just before Te Anau and began heading up towards Milford Sound. It's a 2 hour drive to Milford Sound along a winding road through the forest and the mountains. We didn't intend on driving all the way to Milford Sound, but there were some nice viewpoints and walks that were on the road. We decided to do the Key Summit walk after seeing the Lake Marian Track was closed.

On the way to the Key Summit walk we stopped at the Eglinton Valley viewpoint and the Mirror Lakes. The lakes were more like a small pond accessed via a boardwalk. We walked along the boardwalk and saw the mostly still water, mostly still because of the duck that was sticking its head in the water causing ripples. The mirror effect with the mountains was still working though and I got some nice pictures of the mirrored mountains.

The next stop was our hike. The Key Summit walk was a part of the Routeburn Track, one of a few multi day hikes you can do in this area. It was a gradual climb on a gravel path through a beech forest. The mountains and valley were on the left and we'd sometimes catch a glimpse through the trees. When we got closer to the summit, the trees opened up (and so did the clouds, it started to rain a bit) and we had small switchbacks until we reached the top. Despite the switchbacks, it wasn't steep and we got to the top in about an hour.

At the top we walked around for another 20 minutes or so. It was boggy and there was a nature walk supported by small boardwalks. We also continued walking to a second viewpoint where we could see Lake Marian down below. After the lake viewpoint, we finished the loop around the nature walk and carried on back down the gravel path to the bottom. For some reason, it seemed to take so much longer on the way down than the way up! Either way, we were up and down plus the extra walk at the top in just over two hours for about 8.5 km.

After Key Summit, Allan suggested that we finish the drive to Milford Sound. He said we were over halfway there and we might as well finish the trip. The rest of the drive to Milford Sound was pretty incredible, especially the tunnel roughly hewn through the mountain. When we got to Milford, it wasn't long until sunset. We walked around part of the edge before heading up to a panoramic view.

We came back down after the sun had dipped behind the mountains. We did a short walk around the water towards the shore and got some views of the waterfall as well as some great panorama pictures. It was a pretty cool place and I'm glad Allan insisted on finishing the drive to come here. We left Milford Sound around 17:45 and began the drive back down the winding road to find somewhere to camp. We didn't see the Lord of the Rings locations near Te Anau, and it was at least 2 and a half hours to the original place we intended to camp, so we decided to pay for a DOC campsite on the Milford Road and get an early night to squeeze in a bit more tomorrow. The Henry Creek Campsite was nice enough and fairly quiet. It was also dry so we were able to get the camo stove out and make some soup which worked really well and made a nice meal with half a loaf of bread to share. We tidied up our dinner things and then got ready for bed for our early start tomorrow.Read more