We were off early in the morning because we had made advance reservations on the Milford Monarch through Fiordland Travels' office in Queenstown on a specific boat to take us around in Milford Sound. In the days of the past, there were no motorable roads to Milford Sound - only walking trails. The most famous of these is the Milford Track, and there are many people who do the walking trip from the Te Anau Downs to Milford Sound. The drive to Milford, going as it does through the mountaineous roads of the Southern Alps, is scenic, with natural streams, rivers and innumerable waterfalls which adorned the magnificent cliffs and rocky hills on either side of the road, a tourist attraction in its own right.

One interesting sight was the Avenue of the Disappearing Mountain - a stretch of highway in the midst of a forest with a mountain peak looming straight ahead in the distance (about 60 km from Te Anau). The trees lining the highway were so tall that, at the top, they got together and formed a canopy that allowed us a restricted view of the sky in front. As we drove along the road and looked straight ahead at the mountain peak, we got the distinct feeling that the mountain was going down - as in, sinking away and disappearing, hence the name.

About 100 km from Te Anau is the Homer Tunnel -an unlined tunnel over a kilometre in length. We drove straight in, inadvertently continuing to wear our sunglasses, and suddenly found it so dark inside that we could barely see even with our headlights! Two seconds of panic later, normalcy was restored as we belatedly fixed the problem.

A full 120 km from Te Anau, we finally landed at Milford, parked our car in the parking lot, applied various concoctions of oil and cream on the exposed parts of our body (this was to keep the sandflies away - Milford is famous for those), and walked up to our main deck seats on the Milford Monarch. The boat set sail at 10:50 AM, just as we were settling in and getting to know some of our co-passengers.

Milford Sound is the northernmost fiord in the Fiordland National Park. Fiordland's mountains and valleys were sculptured by glacial ice during the ice age, which continued intermittently from 2 million years to 15,000 years ago. During this period, when the average temperature was 6 degrees lower than at present, an ice cap up to 1200 m thick formed on the mountains of the great divide. This fed large glaciers which deeply excavated the valleys on either side. On the western side, the fiords were created when the glaciers retreated and the sea filled the valleys - that's how Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound were formed. On the eastern side, the glaciers gouged out the deep lakes - like Lake Manapouri and Lake Te Anau. Milford Sound is a true fiord created by a glacial action. It is about 300 m deep but is protected from ocean swells by a narrow entrance and shallow sill of glacial moraine left behind by the retreating glacier. This area has high rainfall (7 to 9m per year) and this results in a layer of freshwater floating on tip of the saltwater. This tannin-stained layer creates a light filtering effect for organisms which allows several deep sea animals to thrive just a few metres below the surface.

Our boat went around the fiord all the way to the point where it opens out into the Tasman Sea. No sooner were we at that point than there was a perceptible change in the size of the waves - suddenly our boat was bobbing up and down with greater force as it rode the waves. It made us realise how much more calm the waters of the Sound itself were. The boat then took us around the edge of the Sound to the underwater observatory. Along the way, we saw some sea-lions basking in the sun, the beautiful Bowen Falls, and the highest peak in that area - Mitre Peak.

The entire Milford Sound excursion had taken us half a day. It was 1:00 PM when we began our long ride back to Te Anau and further on to Wanaka via Queenstown. The weather was just lovely - and driving conditions were excellent. Although it rained a bit along the way, we drove incessantly until we reached Wanaka with brief stops along the way at Te Anau (for lunch at the Olive Tree Café and a car wash at the local petrol station) and Cromwell (for a cup of coffee). While at Te Anau, we also picked up the photos we'd given for developing the previous day (These were the first photographs from our new camera and we were very eager to see the results. In fact, the photos turned out to be very good ones, and in our excitement to look at them, we misplaced them somewhere - only to start missing them 2 days later ... but that's another story).

We're off to Wanaka. Wanna come? Click below to join us...