16/8/9 Te Anau to Milford Sound and return to Queenstown

We awoke to see lots of low cloud and grey skies which was a bit disappointing as we need the day to be a bit less cloudy. we decided to be optimistic and keep our fingers crossed that the weather would clear later on by the time we arrived at the sound. we were picked up at 10am by Cheese another Kiwi driver on a bus with only 8 others...happy days. Fiordland of which Milford Sound is a part, was awarded World Heritage Site status by Unesco in 1994 and the National Park is 1.2million hectares which equivalent to the size of Wales !!! On the way to Milford we stopped to walk along a boardwalk to see a mirror lake . the clouds had started to clear and we had fabulous views of snow capped mountain peaks all around us....beautiful. The scenery got increasingly stunning and the weather increasingly clear. We were very happy and couldn't believe our luck that the weather was great again....remember we are in the winter here !!! We stopped at a place called Knobs Flat for a comfort break which really amused Liz. On the main road into
Milford we passed several avalanches which had crossed the road and caused lots of problems. A huge avalanche had been deliberately started to clear excess snow in the two weeks before and the road closed for 10 days. As the only road into milford we were lucky to be going at all !! That avalanche had engulfed the entrance to the Homer Tunnel (see photo) which is a 1270m long tunnel through the mountains completed in 1953. Once through the tunnel we entered the Clondyke Valley known as valley of a 1000 waterfalls as there are countless streams of water tumbling down the sheer rock faces on both sides of the valley....really amazing sight. We stopped for a short stroll to see a feature called The Chasm which was a fast flowing river with huge rocks carved into curves and holes by the action of the water and small stones...really unusual and interesting. When we got back to the bus two Keas (flightless parrots) were there and came really close to us without any bother .They often take food and will eat anything eg rubber on window seals and shoes etc. We arrived in Milford Sound and boarded our ferry for a 2 hour cruise of the sound. We sat and ate a huge buffet lunch first then went on to the top open deck for the rest of the trip. It was a perfectly clear day and we all said how lucky we were especially when the captain said Milford only gets 80 days like this one a year. We travelled out through the fiord with imposing rocky sheer faces all around. They are covered in trees and waterfalls fall down all around...really beautiful. The sound is incorrectly named as it is actually a fiord cut from a huge glacier not a river as a sound would have been. It was named historically and this has not been changed but the title fiordland is used to correct the error.we passed Mitre Peak named after its similarity to a bishops mitre. It is one of the tallest mountains in the world that rises directly from the sea floor at 1682m.It is also one of Milford Sounds most striking peaks. We sailed out to the opening into the sea before turning around and heading back inside the fiord. We passed seal rock and saw several seals basking in the sun. We then went really close to the Stirling Falls one of two permanent waterfalls which drops 155minto the sound. We all got pretty drenched in the spray as he got so close. We got off the boat at milford Underwater observatory which as you imagine an underwater glass tank where you can view the underwater life. Ther were loads of fish and coral to see and we spent 30 minutes there before getting the boat for the short ride back to the port. It had been a really amazing day. we only stopped once on the drive back to Queenstown and arrived in townat 7.45pm. We were going skiing the next day so went to the hire shop to sort out some skis and boots. We left the skis to collect in the morning and took our boots to our room. We had showers and then spent the evening catching up on the blog which we hadn't had much time for lately.