Travel: Milford Sound – badly named, but well worth a visit
Dylan du Ross, from Hawke’s Bay, is sharing his travel experiences around New Zealand.
Milford Sound is one of the most recognisable area names in New Zealand. Which is a little silly, because its name is also wrong.
The person in charge of naming the area made a huge geographical mistake by saying the landform was a sound (formed by a sea flooding a river valley) rather than a fiord (formed by glaciers carving through mountain).
Obviously it's still a must do, so off to Milford Fiord I went.
A night of jump-starting cars and cooking dinner was Maggie and I's first experience of Milford Sound. Although annoying, it was expected as Fiordland gets 6833 mm of rainfall each year. In comparison, Hawke’s Bay gets 813 mms of rainfall each year. I know where I'm going the next time we have a water shortage.
The stormy mood carried on through the night. Thankfully, morning proved a more playful mood. Reds, pinks and blues ignited the sky.
The drive to our $40 boat cruise was incredible.
A natural landscape which seems to be designed for mythical giants guided us through Fiordland. 1200m of tunnel through a mountain completed the journey, it seemed to be a mechanical effort to try to compete with nature's brilliance, but of course it falls well short.
A rare blue duck welcomes us. This truly was something else. Signs advertising 100Mb of internet for $10 helped prove that.
Entering the Milford Sound ferry port was an experience similar to being in an airport. You had different companies with different boats outlining the walls with large queues at each of them. My inexperience with automatic hand towel machines meant I left the toilets with wet hands, making for an awkward handshake when boarding our ship.
And off we went. Strong winds swept people of their feet turning the cruise into a comedy. I felt guilty for laughing. The mountains apparently loved this so much they were drooling waterfalls. It's crazy to think that these landforms were created by glaciers carving through the land, centimetres at a time. Even just 12000 years ago, these glaciers that helped create Fiordland were 2kms thick. I can't even comprehend it. The last remaining ice, found on a few mountain tops, is said to disappear in the next 15 years. A sad thought to think about. The boat continued to drift over 300m deep water until we reached the Tasman Sea. A roller coaster ride commenced as the choppy water through us into the air.
As we turn around, I notice a fleet of tourist ships on our trail. If our boat, the cheapest one, had a Pita Pit on board, one could only imagine what the others had. Let’s just hope they managed to get some pictures without our smug faces in the centre of them. No one wants a picture in nature with something as unnatural as 100 other tourists taking photos.
On our return to the dock, the captain drove us into a waterfall. Many fascinated passengers soaked themselves for the perfect selfie. To be fair I don't blame them, this is a very rare place in the world. We arrived back safely and mesmerised.
Poor weather sadly dictated the rest of our trip in Fiordland, we stopped off at a few areas of interest but nothing could compare to what we had witnessed in the “sounds”. Despite this we did try to do a hike up a mountain the next day, but that only resulted in nothing but stress and a lot of wasted fuel (which we didn't have much off, hence the stress). So we left in a huff, and continued the adventure.
The Chasm Falls odd rock formations were formed by pebbles getting stuck in little holes, then rolling around for thousands of years.
I cannot emphasise enough how magical this part of New Zealand is. Even though our trip was short-lived – and we really only spent a couple hours seeing Fiordland – every expense was worth it and I really look forward to coming back.
