Milford Sound

We are currently in Te Anau as a base for visiting the Milford sound.  We'd already booked a boat trip in the sound.  The drive here started out pretty overcast and it had rained all night.  However, enroute the weather cleared although still pretty cold.  Today, we awoke to a beautiful clear day...what luck as it rains 260+ inches a year, here, and has been known to rain more than 2 feet in 14 hours! Since this area reminds us much of home...and we have been to Princess Louisa with steep cliff-sides, in our own sailboat, so again were prepared to not be too impressed.  Again, we were pleasantly surprised!

It takes 2 hours to drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound.  We passed some spectacular scenery and had a few stops along the route.  One was at Mirror Lakes, which are more like little puddles, but allowed for great reflections.

 Simply gorgeous!

 Along the route, we drive through a long tunnel 1.2 Kms.  Quite a feat to build this.

This is the other end of the tunnel...you can barely see the shed there to the right of the photo.

 This is at the dock for Milford Sound.  this is our boat from the Cruise Milford company.  We really lucked out, here, because there were only 20 passengers on this trip...could have been 40.  That being said, I'd done my homework and booked this trip because the boat was small.  We were so happy we did as some of the boat have 300 or more aboard.  We had so few passengers that we got to take great photos!

 I have to say the photos just don't do it justice.  The walls go straight up with multiple waterfalls.  Absolutely amazing!

 There were a couple of seal groups on the rocks.  Apparently, these are the juvenile males that are chased away from the main colony.  'Big Daddy' doesn't want any competition.

 This is just a sample of the scenery.

 Apparently this area is misnamed as a sound because, sounds are formed by rivers, but fjords are formed by glaciers...and these streams/waterfalls are from glaciers.  We headed up one side, into the edge of the Tasman Sea, then back down the other side.  This is us heading back down into the sound.

 This is the second group of seals...gives you some idea how close we got.  There are no issues getting close to the walls as the sound is very deep.

 We went up to, and then into, this waterfall.  We all got soaked!! Just like 'Maid o' the Mist' at Niagara Falls.

This is us in front of the same waterfall, after the drenching...still smiling!  On to Invercargill tomorrow...one week to go!