Spooky Milford Sound

After leaving Curio Bay we continued further south along the Catlins coast, walked to Slope Point, the southernmost point of NZ South Island, and saw elephant seals by the Waipapa Point lighthouse. The southern coast didn't impress us as much as our guidebook promised it would have, except for the animal life of course. We were looking forward to see some mountains again!

Slope Point

This could be a fur seal, elephant seal or a sea lion...

Winds blow hard in the south

When the road turned inland and started climbing towards Te Anau, the scenery changed dramatically, mountains rising in front of us. Te Anau, small touristy town on the shores of the homonymous lake, is itself surrounded by high peaks and is a starting point for several multiday treks. It is also the town closest to our next destination, the famous Milford Sound.

On the way to Te Anau

Te Anau lake

Milford Sound, one of the fiords of the southwest coast in Fiordland National Park and the most accessible and therefore most popular one, is only 120km away from Te Anau but since there are several short hikes along the way, we started off early. But as we were approaching the first valleys, clouds creeped in and we decided to postpone the hikes for the drive back the next day, so that we'd have some views. When we passed the Homer tunnel that cuts through the mountains and appears above the Milford Sound, everything was covered in clouds and fog.

Mirror Lakes. The weather is still nice

First clouds creeping in

Homer Tunnel. Less scary than we expected

Can you see Milford Sound down there?

We were still positive and rushed straight to the harbor of the Sound, to see the famous Mitre Peak. Everything was grey but there were almost no sandflies, little mosquitoes that usually move in huge swarms in this region and eat tourists and hikers alive.

Milford Sound - the Mitre Peak is on the left

The NZ west coast is one of the wettest places on the planet, the annual average rainfall in Milford Sound itself is 6700mm! Just for the comparison, Barcelona receives less than 640 mm of precipitations per year, so as you can see that Milford really is a very wet place and one cannot count too much on a good weather. We planned to walk around some more after lunch, but rain of course changed our plans and we ended up spending the entire afternoon inside our hostel, reading about sunny Mexico and crossing our fingers that the rain would stop before our morning cruise. And... it didn't. It was still raining heavily, with the wind blowing strong, as we walked to the boat terminal. When the cruise company employee tried to cheer us up saying that this was exactly the weather that shows Milford Sound at its best, I was ready to punch him.

Not much of a sunrise

But, as it turned out, he might have been actually telling the truth! On a sunny day the place must be very scenic, but after heavy rain the high slopes of the whole fiord is knitted with tiny (and not as tiny) waterfalls and the clouds add to a special, spooky yet majestic atmosphere. It was perfect! The rain eased a bit and we spent almost the entire cruise on the outer deck, amazed, despite getting constantly whipped by the winds.

On our little boat

This is actually a huge cruise liner, dwarfed by Stirling waterfall, one of only two permanent waterfalls in the fiord

I tried to take a picture when our boat got to the bottom of the same waterfall

Seals

All the white lines are new waterfalls

What we thought would be a disaster, went pretty great in the end. We felt positive again and started hoping that maybe we could even do the postponed hikes from the day before, but that would have been too much to ask for. We did some stops along the way, and finally met the famous keas, the destructively playful alpine parrots found only in New Zealand. But as we were getting further from Milford Sound, the heavy rain returned and kept us company until Te Anau.

Glad this is not our car

Thanks to the bad weather we could do some planning for the next months, and now we have a flight booked for Dallas and from there to Mexico! We are in the second half of our trip already but there are still places to see, things to experience and people to meet...

When we woke up, the peaks we could see from our campground were covered in snow! Winter is coming. We hope to escape it, at least for a while, it's time to start moving north (which in the southern hemisphere means towards a warmer weather)!

Snow capped mountains around Te Anau