Milford Sound

Monday morning we were up very early and decided to leave the campsite immediately and head for Milford Sound which was just under an hour away. We were up very high and could even see snow on the mountains. After going through Homer Tunnel the road was very high up and windy. Not windy as in wind but windy as in going around bends.  I don’t like heights so I just focused on the inside of the road. Thankfully the high and windy bit of the road was not that long. When we arrived at Milford Sound we had our breakfast while watching our first wild Kea playing in the car park.

 

The boat trip was at 10.30 which gave us plenty of time to look around.

 

 

We were told about a strange looking boat which we could see across the sound. It was an Alien space vessel. Actually that’s the truth. It is part of a film set that they are shooting for one of the Alien series of movies. They even had an helicopter move equipment from another area to the set.

 

We chose to go on a Nature Cruise, so had lots of commentary on board telling us about the sea life, plants and mountains. Milford Sound is incorrectly named as it is a Fiord but the early English settlers were used to calling their sea inlets Sounds so that why it is called a Sound. We saw many Fur Seals even a few having squabbles over who was the boss. Again the weather was perfect sunny and the sea calm. We did venture right out to the Tasman Sea. On our way back we even went under a waterfall. Those who were brave enough went outside and got a little wet. Elder Saunders stayed inside but I did go outside and I thought that I had even filmed it but again I press the record button at the wrong time and only got us coming out of it. It was refreshing, cold and fun.

Can you see the Fur Seals behind us? 





 

Can you see the rainbow effect on these waterfalls

 

 

This is the water fall I went under.

 

 

We also went inside a floating sealife observatory. That was very interesting. What we saw was totally natural and anything could have happened. Sadly nothing exciting did but we did see a few  unusual fish.

We were on our travels again and aimed to get as close to Dunedin as possible in fact we ended up about an hour away from Dunedin and only stopped because it was getting dark. Coincidently the place was called Milton.

On route though we did see an interesting cycle.