February 21 - Milford Sound

From New Zealand

Another early morning - driving along the Milford Road from Te Anau to Milford Sound. A gorgeous strip of land with (more) mountains, streams, waterfalls and CLOUDS. A number of very nice walks for which we had very little time. We set a goal of being on a Milford Sound Cruise before the big tour buses arrived.

That doesn't mean that we didn't stop - nor that we didn't take a couple short walks.

Mirror lakes:

From New Zealand

Cascade Creek Walk:

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East Homer Nature walk - without the nature information cards.

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The Homer Tunnel - sight of THE highest alpine traffic light! (Sorry, you can't see the traffic light. There was nothing unusual about it - just the location was unique.)

From New Zealand

And, finally, the Chasm Walk. We buzzed through this walking loop - more to keep ahead of the pack of German tourists that were clogging the path than due to our time constraints. What we were instructed by our guide books to appreciate was the massive volume of water that moves through this area and I must say the streams and water falls were very impressive.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

We were very pleased to find Keas in the parking lot when we returned from our walk - just like the guide books said we might - and even more pleased to find they were not eating Anna and Andrew's car!

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The Milford Sound is really a fjord. (I love that word! I remember learning it in 3rd grade geography class. It hasn't gotten to be any less fun to say.) Our cruise took us through the fjord and into the ocean (just barely). We had chosen the "Nature Cruise" rather than the "Scenic Cruise" because we figured it would be hard to miss the scenic element of the location. So, along the way we nosed up to two spots where the fur seals like to snooze and even turned around in order to cruise with a small pod of bottle nose dolphins. The cliffs surrounding the sound (which isn't, really) were streaming with water falls thanks to the recent rainy days. Only a couple are always "on" and to appreciate them fully we pulled up with the bow of the boat underneath two of them. I didn't stand in the full spray - not good for my camera, you know - but Kevin got dampish.

After the cruise we retraced our path - now with sunshine

From New Zealand

- stopping only twice including a "redo" of the Mirror Lakes.

From New Zealand

Partly this was because I had taken the New Zealand original "Sea Legs" anti-motion sickness tablet prior to our cruise and, despite what the clerk at the chemist told me, I was very, very drowsy. Partly it was something else, of course. Glow Worms in Te Anau. We were hoping to get back in time to see the caves and still have enough hours left in the day to travel onward.