Milford Sound 23-24th January 2007

Another must do in New Zealand is a cruise around Milford Sound. The drive to Milford Sound was possibly better than the cruise.

The scenery was stunning, we stopped off lots of times along the way. There were wide grass filled valleys then we went through the divide into the rainforest. It was not a tropical rainforest but all the trees have a thick covering of moss and lichens, they get on average 7 metres of rain there a year. We stopped at the entrance to the Homer tunnel, in one place snow had fallen straight off the top of the mountains and a steam was flowing through the ice creating a tunnel and lots of ice cold air. This is also a spot to find Keas, they hang around the car park and tear everything apart like the monkeys at longleat.

Coming out the other side of the tunnel the road wound down into the valley with hundreds more waterfalls flowing straight down the almost vertical sides. There was alot of cloud around and the waterfalls seemed to just fall from the cloud. We also had our first NZ encounter with the dreaded sandflies!

The next morning it was a bit more cloudy for our cruise and we had some rain but it is a beautiful fjord.