Milford Sound, Fiordland National Park

Kia ora!

I love this sign!!!!

The site of my next adventure is Milford Sound, Piopiotahi in Māori, in Fiordland National Park and the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage site.  The Maori legend is that Piopiotahi was carved out by a godly figure who had been given the task of shaping the Fiordland coast.  Chanting a karakia (prayer), he hacked at the towering rock walls with his toki (adze) called Te Hamo.  I took a sightseeing day trip (7:30am - 8pm) from Queenstown using 2 of my Flexitrip segments plus $90 for a 2 hour cruise.

A hanging valley

Milford Sound is actually a fiord but it was determined that Milford Fiord was too much of mouthful.  A sound is a river formed valley subsequently flooded by the sea.  Fiords are formed by erosive effects of glaciers.  There are 14 fiords in the National Park.  Milford is the only one accessible by car.

Milford Sound was named the 2008 Travelers' Choice Destination by TripAdvisor and is acclaimed as New Zealand's most famous tourist destination with about 1 million visitors/year.  Although Milford Sound is about 100 km/60 miles northwest of Queenstown as the crow flies, there is only one road that goes way south and around so it's a 300 km/180 mile drive that takes 4 hours without stopping.  I'm sure NZ has done cost/benefit analysis and environmental impact studies; I guess it's not feasible (yet) to build a more direct route.  Anyway, the road goes through different terrain and is very scenic.

We went into this waterfall.  See the rainbow at its base.

The fiord runs 15 kilometres inland from the Tasman Sea and is surrounded by sheer rock faces that rise 1,200 meters (3,900 ft) or more on either side.  The fiords were shaped by glaciers that ran down towards the coast, eroding the valleys well below sea level.  In many cases, the water is actually deeper inside the mouths of the fiords than it is outside, because the ice piled up here, before melting when it was finally ejected into the water.  Lush rainforest clings precariously to these cliffs.  Tree avalanches and then regrowth are evidently common.

Sheer granite cliffs

With average annual rainfall of 6,813 mm (272 inches!!!) on 182 days a year, Milford Sound is known as the wettest inhabited place in New Zealand and one of the wettest in the world. Rainfall can reach 250 mm (10") in 24 hours.  Luckily for me, although the sky was cloudy with patches of blue, it didn't rain.

Tree avalanche!!

I did get wet though.  There are two permanent waterfalls that run year round, Lady Bowen Falls and Stirling Falls. After heavy rain like the previous day's, hundreds of temporary waterfalls can be seen, some reaching a thousand meters in length.  Our cruise boat, the Lady Bowen, nosed into one of the longest temporary falls.  Passengers were invited to borrow rain jackets if they wanted to get wet.  I took pix from the stern.   Near the end of our cruise, we nosed into Stirling Falls.  Instead of backing out, our boat went alongside the falls.  I tried to get out of the way, but there was so much water coming down so hard that the spray got me.

Kayaking in Milford

I saw several fur seals but no penquins, dolphins or whales.  Eventually the clouds did part to reveal the top of Mitre Peak, shaped like a bishop's hat, and at 1695 meters/5552 ft, the fiord's highest mountain.  The base of Mitre Peak runs 300 meters/984 ft down from sea level.

Escaping from under Stirling Falls

The drive to (and from) Milford Sound took us through Te Anau, on Lake Te Anau, the second largest lake in NZ, the largest on South Island.  Te Anau is the departure point by boat of the famed 54km/33 mile Milford Track that my friend, Lori Hutcheson, tramped 20 years ago.  Te Anau means Cave of swirling waters in Maori.  Tours are available to deep inside the caves past the roar of the water to the silent glow worm grottoes.   Te Anau has 2 Chinese restaurants, one of them on Wong Way.  LOL!!!

The Eglinton Valley is farm country with traditional beef cattle and sheep, deer since the 1980s and most recently, dairy cows.   Conservation Scientific Reserves for ancient alpine forests of Mountain Pine and Red Snow Tussocks show NZ's desire to preserve and promote native plant species.

See the Mirror Lake sign in the middle of the pic

Photo op stops allowed walks across The Chasm with its waterfalls and strangely shaped rocks and potholes sculpted from thousands of years of swirling water and at Mirror Lakes, kettle lakes left by the glaciers.

Mountains of The Southern Alps

The road to Te Anau began in 1929 as Depression era work with men, picks, shovels and wheelbarrows.  Work began in 1935 on the Homer Tunnel, a (very dim and very long) 1.2 km tunnel drilled through solid granitic rock.  At least three men were killed by avalanches before the tunnel opened in 1954.  The tunnel is straight and was originally single-lane and gravel-surfaced. The tunnel walls remain unlined granite.

Moss covered trees at The Chasm

Roof lighting was fitted and traffic lights reintroduced in 2004 to reduce capacity constraints and safety issues. Although the tunnel is large enough for a bus and a smaller vehicle to pass, meetings involving two coaches or campervans are problematic. This is alleviated by the fact that the traffic is very tidal, towards Milford Sound in the morning and toward Te Anau in the afternoon. The traffic lights operate only during the peak summer season, since the avalanche risk makes it unsafe to stop and queue at the portals in winter and spring.   The tunnel and its history is awesome.

The Homer Tunnel

You gotta go.
Cheers!
Cyn