Milford Sound

Day 3 of our South island tour was to go to Milford Sound. This is one of the world's top tourist destinations. We had made a booking through a local tour operator to enjoy this day. It saved us from driving in unknown and winding terrain and weather conditions. Also, it is a very long drive approx 5 hrs one way, and best done by a professional we felt. Milford Sound is a fiord in the Fiordland national park.

The tour operator picked us up from our accommodation as promised; we started at 7 am.

Sitting in the comfort of our small tour bus, we gazed out at the Remarkables as the sun

slowly cracked to dawn. It was a long drive and all along we enjoyed the natural waterfalls and gushing

streams along the road. Generally the main event/activity scheduled for the day/trip becomes the highlight; but in the Milford Sound trip, the hightlights are the entire day and the journey itself!!

There were a few pitstops in the journey. Among them, there were some interesting stops. One was to see the Mirror Lakes. These lakes are amazing and the reflections are as good as the original! The picture says it all......

Later, we stopped to go into the woods and see a huge river gushing down into a waterfall. The walk was well paved into a wooden path and was just 15 minutes return. The rains had made the leaves greener and the water whiter! Though it was not deep into the woods, the huge trees and the general surroundings gave that fake feeling.

After the pitstops, we reached the fiord where there were many tourists like us. In a few minutes there was a cruise that would take us to the lip of the Tasman and return back to the small wharf. The cruise through the fiord was again one of its kind, with huge, huge mountains standing majestically all around you. The tallest is the Milford peak amongst them.

The cruise is 2 hours long and we saw some marine life too. On a sunny day, the cruise would have been much better, but on a cloudy day like ours, we had to be satisfied with the views and the experience we had! We had our packed lunch onboard, with heating facilities and bevarages, we were pleased with the cruise experience.

Before we could realize we were soon heading home, from the cruise trip. The familiar drive and some more missed out scenes were photographed, for the memory treasure. The famous NZ movie The World's fastest Indian (also NZ's highest grossing movie) was playing in the bus to enjoy our journey back to Queenstown. After another sumptous meal at an Indian restaurant we were embarking the end of our first leg of the vacation.

Continued in the next post..............