Although I was up in time for sunrise today, it was grey and raining so was little to see. The drive to Milford Sound takes 2 hours but all the advice says to set off at 8 and allow 4 hours because it's so beautiful & there are loads of lakes/hills/mountains/rivers/waterfalls etc to admire (and a conga line of tour bus companies along the route). Unfortunately the only views I could see were most, fog & clouds! Still, the guidebook say rain is what makes Milford Sound the 8th wonder of the world - so i was surely in for a treat??!! It didn't stop raining the whole way, ranging from a shower to torrential down pour/thunder/lightning! Milford sound gets 7m of rain a year - I reckon 1m of hat must have fallen today! It was so wet! And I come from Derbyshire! I did venture out of the car on a few occasions, but many of the 'must do' lookouts were pointless because the visibility & the rain were so bad.
I arrived at Milford Sound around 11.30 - so it had taken me around 3 hours, so not bad.
There are many boat cruises available, and they all do the same route but are spaced out so they depart every 15mins or so so it doesn't feel busy. The girl at the info centre in Queenstown had recommended Mitre Peak cruises because they are smaller and don't take bookings from your bus companies so is no fighting over a sea of selfie sticks to get a good view!
There were only around 20-30 people on my boat (which apparently takes 75max compared to some of the others that take over a hundred so would def recommend them) it was nice and spacious - and no selfie sticks! And amazingly not much rain for the 2 hours we were on the boat
The views were amazing!
For those that don't know, Milford Sound is a Fjord carved out again and again by glaciers. The rocks go up so high, and because of all the rain were covered in waterfalls - some of which were being blown upwards because of the wind, many of which were only there because of the rain, had I gone on a dry day I'd have just seen rocks! Had I gone the day before I'd have seen nothing as the weather was too bad for them to sail, so seems I had picked a good day to go! And It was so amazing to see, I'd def not seen anything like it before, the boats all look tiny in comparison, anything would. Oh and I also saw 3 seals while on the cruise, no penguins though
As the boat came back to shore the heavens really opened with thunder, lightning, hailstones etc. I was once again drenched by the time I got back to the car. Stopping at the cafe only to get a hot chocolate (which was the nicest hot choc I've ever had - tasted of marshmallows) I made the 4 hour journey to Arrowtown. Given the rain was now even worse than my earlier journey I didn't stop at the look outs I'd missed before, which is a shame - I'll just have to come back! And it was dark by the time I drove through Devils staircase so I've no idea what that looked like, but I do know I drove uphill for a very long time along winding roads with no fence or barriers again!
Arrowtown is just a stop over to Lake Tekapo where I'm heading tomorrow. I managed to pick the only pub/hotel that wasn't allowed to sell alcohol due to having its licence revoked for 24hours, and because they were selling alcohol had decided to close the kitchen too! So it was back out into the rain for me in search of food. Hopefully it will stop raining tomorrow so I can look round, it's meant to be a pretty town