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!

New Zealand 8 - Doubtful Sound

When you are on a trip, you are pretty much at the mercy of the weather. You only have a defined amount of time to see things, regardless of whether the weather cooperates or not. On the day we went to Doubtful Sound, this is how the day started:



Not very promising! But you can't let the weather keep you from doing things. So to get to Doubtful Sound, you take a boat across Lake Manapouri (from the dock in the picture above). We did get a few photos with both of us in them and below is a photo of us crossing Lake Manapouri.

Once we got across the lake, a bus picked us up and drove us up and over a mountain through rain and fog. We came back down on the western side of the mountain and took a much larger boat to cruise Doubtful Sound. Doubtful Sound is about ten times the side of Milford Sound, which is much more popular. It's hard to choose between them, as both are beautiful. You just cruise along on what seems to be a placid lake, watching the mountains rise up out of the lake and disappear into the fog and clouds overhead.

Since it was very rainy before our cruise, there were thousands of waterfalls cascading off the mountains into the Sound. When I say rainy, I mean RAINY! They do not measure their rainfall in "inches", they measure it in "meters". The Doubtful Sound area gets about 80 meters (250 feet!) of rain a year! Which results in waterfalls everywhere!

At one point the ship's captain pulled the boat into a secluded cove and turned off the motors. We just sat there, listening to the waterfalls. Everyone on the boat was absolutely silent, just enjoying the feeling of experiencing how this area must be when there's no one there.

More waterfalls.

To get a sense of scale of the mountains and the sound, in the picture below, that is not a small boat coming toward us. It's about a 35-foot cruiser.

We'll leave you with one last panorama shot of Doubtful Sound. It didn't quite match well at the water line in the middle of the picture, but it gives you an idea of what the sound looks like.

Thanks for checking in. For the next posting, we will go to Milford Sound, which is north of Doubtful Sound. It's the more popular destination for those who visit the area.