Milford Sound

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Welcome to Milford Sound, New Zealand’s most famous tourist destination.

Milford Sound is the jewel in the crown of Fjordlands National Park.

It is the northern-most of 14 fjords, all cut by glaciers during the last ice age.

Milford Sound is a 15 km-long gash carved into the South Island’s west coast.  The water is more than 1,000 feet deep, and the rock walls tower 3,900 feet above sea level.  The two little specks on the water in this photo are actually large cruise ships.

Cruise ships this size.  These tour ships are one of only two ways to see the Sound.  The rock walls are so sheer and so high, there is no shore-line except at the inland end of the Sound.

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The other way to see the Sound is by sea kayak.

That is what Carol and Roger decided to do.  Most of the pictures in this blog were taken from the shore because the water was too rough…and Roger too sea-sick…to shoot anything from the kayak.

There are three images from Milford Sound that make every tour brochure or travel book, and we have them for you…

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Stirling, Falls…almost 510 feet tall…creates a rainbow on sunny days as its water tumbles into the Sound.  It also creates its own micro-climate of gusty winds and 5-foot-high waves.

Mitre Peak…the highest point on the Sound…which has a sheer drop from its summit to the water.  This is THE shot for a Milford tourist.  The sheer wall of stone is too hard for climbers to hammer in their pitons, so it’s never been scaled. Adjacent to the peak is a saddle.  Several years ago a man and woman were climbing the saddle, a very narrow path with steep cliffs down both sides.  At one point, the guy looked around and his wife was gone.  It took days to find her body; the rescue workers didn’t even know which side of the saddle to search. 

And Bowen Falls…which is actually higher than its more famous companion, though it doesn’t look it.  Milford Sound gets 268 inches of rain a year (compared to Seattle’s 40).  It can rain 10 inches in just one day.  When this happens, sitting below these falls becomes fatally dangerous.

At the end of Milford Sound, the Cleddau and Arthur Rivers flow into the sound forming an estuary rich in sea life.

At the campsite where we stayed there was a constant chirping of what we discovered were hundreds of thousands of cicadas. 

They were at the peak of their seven year breeding cycle.  The noise was so loud at times you had to yell to make yourself heard.  They were really, really loud.