New Zealand 9 - Milford Sound

We couldn't decide between seeing Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound. We debated it for a long time, and read many opinions on the choice. In the end, we decided to do both. Unfortunately, Annie wasn't feeling great that day, so she couldn't make it. I was marginal myself, but went ahead with the trip.

We took a large bus from Te Anau to Milford Sound and on the way, we stopped at the Mirror Lakes:
We also stopped at the Eglinton Valley viewpoint (below). We saw a kea parrot here. I'll put some pictures in another post on the birds we saw in New Zealand later.

The tide was out for my first view of Milford Sound, but as you can tell, it is impressive. The snow-capped mountain rise straight up from the water and tower over your head.

Here is the ship we took to cruise the sound in. It was older than the Doubtful Sound ship, but since it was such a beautiful day, I wasn't inside very much.

As I said, the mountains just rise straight up out of the water. When I saw the kayakers in the sound (see below picture), it reminded me of the scene from the first Lord of the Rings movie (The Fellowship of the Ring) at the end of the movie when they were taking some boats through a gorge. We did drive by that gorge later (it's near Queenstown), but this view really gave me that same feeling.

Just like the Doubtful Sound cruise, the heavy rains had really made the waterfalls flow.

There were beautiful waterfalls, that dropped hundreds of feet off the side of the mountains. Usually the captain of the ship pulled right up into the waterfalls.

It's hard to overstate the impact that the "wildness" of New Zealand has on you. It's just a magical place, like living in a National Park in the US. You have to remember that New Zealand is the size of California, but only has about 4 million people in it.

We saw the second-rarest bird in the world on the cruise - the Fiordland Crested Penguin.

We also saw some fur seals sunning themselves on the rocks.

Here's one last picture of the feeling you get within the sound. It is breath-taking.

So, which is better - Doubtful Sound or Milford Sound? I still can't say. Milford was beautiful, but we had a very sunny, gorgeous day there. Milford is a little more touristy, and Doubtful Sound is more wild. I loved both of them, and recommend seeing both.

Thanks for checking out the blog!