Milford Sound, New Zealand

Today we visited Milford Sound, which isn’t actually a Sound at all, it’s a fjord on the Tasman Sea. Captain James Cook sailed past the opening. Welshman John Stokes gave it it’s name in 1851. Donald Sutherland arrived in 1877, and became the Sound’s first European settler. He ended up staying 42 years & built an 18 room accommodation house. He rowed tourists around the Sound to become the region’s first tour operator. We missed out on the Underwater Observatory, as it was damaged by recent flooding. As it was, we had to travel to Milford Sound by coach bus convoy. The road just opened up to tour operators in the past month after flooding destroyed large sections of it. The convoys are allowed through at specific times to allow road crews to carry out repairs. That way they’re only interrupted twice a day, when as many as 120 coaches go in & out. We expect this operation may grind to a halt with New Zealand’s new policy of putting all visitors & returning Islanders into a 14 day quarantine upon arrival. We circled the Sound for an hour and a half in a huge boat. Highlights were seeing Stirling (155 metres) & Bowen Falls (161 metres), which are both higher than Niagara Falls. We did see a pair of juvenile fur seals, as well. The coach ride was 2.5 hours each way from Te Anau over a winding, steep (in places) road. We stopped at Mirror Lake on our way there. We climbed to 940 metres above sea level at one point, and travelled through a tunnel that was more than 1 km long. Great scenery once again. We were also fortunate to have a really nice day again today. Our bus driver told us that the Milford Sound area has rain over 200 days a year, averaging over 7 metres a year!! He said it receives the most amount of rain of any place at sea level on the planet.Read more