New Zealand Day 5: Milford Sound

Milford Sound is one of the most popular tourist destinations in New Zealand. From Te Anau, it is about a 120 km drive on a winding road. The drive is stunning, though, with lots of places to stop and hike around. We drove straight there and moseyed our way back.

Mountains peeking through the clouds on the road to Milford.

Waiting in line to drive through the Homer Tunnel. Look at that sky!

Driving through the Homer Tunnel. Kind of scary.

The thing to do at Milford Sound is to take a boat tour. We didn't make any plans ahead of time, and we were advised that most of the tour buses arrive for boats departing around midday, so we hightailed it out of Te Anau to arrive before all of the other tourists. We walked up to the nearest tour company window, bought our tickets for a "nature cruise" of the sound and got on the boat just as it was departing. We couldn't have planned it better if we tried!

A cloudy day on the Sound. The area gets 7 m of rain annually. 

She wasn't too interested in the scenery, so Rox made a friend on the boat.

Cold, rainy weather on the boat! Perfect!

Getting drenched at Stirling Falls

We didn't see much wildlife on the tour, only a few fur seals. We heard about a new genus of lizards that was discovered in a nearby canyon and learned that they were thinking of reintroducing the endangered flightless Takahe in this area. Milford Sound is pretty cool, but I don't know if I agree with Rudyard Kipling in calling it "The Eighth Wonder of the World."

On the drive home, we first stopped to take a short walk to The Chasm. I was changing Roxy's diaper in the carpark where we had our first interaction with a kea! These naughty parrots hang out in carparks, waiting for people to feed them and generally acting mischievous. They are known to pull the rubber off of car windows. A kea landed on top of our car and kept poking his head through the door while I was doing the changing. Nate had a good laugh when I tried to scare the bird off with a swift elbow jab (I missed).  Look at the beak on that bird! Now imagine that beak breathing down your neck!

The kea is quite drab until he shows his bright red underwings.

Giving the kea the evil eye right before I tried to elbow him.

By the time I finished changing the baby, a crowd of people had surrounded us and were taking photos of that cheeky kea.

Bridge over The Chasm.

Waiting in line on the other side of the Homer Tunnel.

We stopped at the Divide, which is the lowest east-west pass in the Southern Alps. There was a trailhead to Key Summit, which promised great views of the Fjords and valleys around us.

Trail signs in New Zealand don't give distances - they give the time it should take you to complete the hike (I found this very annoying and condescending. I know, lighten up, Cory). The roundtrip hike to Key Summit was supposed to take us about two hours. We had a cranky baby on our hands so we did our hike double quick. We made it to 15 minutes from the top (according to the sign on the trail) in half an hour before the baby bomb exploded:

Um. Roxy's ready to go, thankyouverymuch.

Parts of the trail were lined with greenstone.

Despite not reaching the summit, we still had some pretty good views:

The road to Milford Sound and all around the island are lined with lupine. These hardy plants were gorgeous and are my new favorite flower. 

Beautiful flowers at the end of a beautiful day.

New Zealand Day 4: Te Anau

We had a lot of driving to do on Day Four. Luckily for us, we took the Southern Scenic Route to our next destination. I didn't get many photos of the drive, so just imagine sweeping landscapes, lush green hills filled with fluffy white sheep and snow-capped mountains peeking up in the distance.

Not even close to doing justice to the scenic drive.

We stopped in Te Anau, a tourist town that serves as a base camp for trips into the Fjordland. Basically, it's a place for tour buses to pick up hundreds of tourists who want to see Milford Sound (tomorrow). It's also a starting point for hikers to start on the Milford Track, which is one of New Zealand's "Great Walks." The Milford Track is called The Finest Walk in the World (Ahem. If you want to hike instead of walk, try the John Muir Trail), and we would have loved to do it. Alas, one-third of our party would be scooting up the trail instead of walking, so we have to save it for another trip.

Te Anau doesn't have much to offer, so we rested up after a big travel day and looked forward to the next day's visit to Milford Sound.

Family portrait (crashed by friendly Fletcher the Dog) on the banks of Lake Te Anau.