Milford Sound

Milford Sound is gorgeous - except for Oslo Fjord I have not been to the Norwegian fjords yet, and I like the Icelandic westfjords -, but Milford definitely is a highlight. Did you know, that the name Milford SOUND is actually incorrect. Paulie had explained to us that a sound was originally created by a river and then flooded by seawater, whereas a fjord was created by a glacier. Well, Milford was created by a glacier or according to Maori belief by a demi-good who carved all the fjords in Fjordland National Park with Milford being the last, the most northern and his masterpiece. The reason that the New Zealand fjords are called sounds is, that in the English language there did not exist a word for "fjord" when the names were given. Only, in the middle of the twentieth century the word "fjord" was transferred from Norwegian into English and that's why the National Park is called FJORDland. The rain had stopped by the time the cruise started. There were still some "mystic" clouds, but also blue sky could be seen in between. Due to the rainfalls in the night and morning there were many temporary waterfalls that only come into existence after rainfalls. The waterfalls gave an additional beauty to the landscape. At the edge to the Tasman Sea the ship turned around back into the fjord. At one rock we could see some furseals and twice the captain steered the vessel directly into a waterfall. I enjoyed the cruise very much. Well, after 90 minutes the cruise was over and we had to drive the five hours back to Queenie. When we came back to the harbor, still no keas had appeared. That made me a little sad, but I was hoping for more one more chance to see them at Mount Cook. On the way back, Paulie did not talk as much as on the way to Milford. Most of the time, I was just looking out of the window. For the last two hours, Paulie had put a movie with Anthony Hopkins about the New Zealand motorcycle race driver Burt Munro on the screen which was pretty good. I tried following the film as well as looking out of the window😂Back in Queenstown on the way to the hostel, I went for a beer and some fries into a bar. Anyway, I was pretty tired and did not stay very long.Read more