Day 19: Queenstown - Milford Sound

Mildford Sound it's renowned for its scenery and I'm not sure whether we had a good or a bad day weather wise. The previous day it had rained all day but today althogh it didn't rain it was cloudy all day which gave us the opportunity to take some pretty amazing pictures with the clouds although perhaps they wouldn't be the ones you would see advertising Mildford Sound.

Most places in the world measure their annual rainfall in millimetres. Here they measure it in metres... so looking at it that way it looks like we had a pretty good day. :-)

Mildford Sound is a 600Km return trip from Queenstown, so get ready to spend some quality time in a bus should you decide to do this excursion.

On the way in, some Bus-shots. I'm getting better with the bus-shots, don't you think?

Toilet stop

a few more bus-shots (Here in NZ sometimes the road to your destination can be as interesting as your destination itself).

Quick stop at mirror lakes:

And along the way we bumped into a Kea (a type of New Zeland parrot)

While waiting for the traffic light in the tunnel to Mildford Sound (it takes 15 minutes to switch) we used our time wisely...

You don't get that on a sunny day!

Next stop: The chasm

As it turns out after heavy rain the water rush downstream picking up pebbles and gravels. Stones that come to rest in a rocky slot are swirled round by the current and over many centuries they have ground out the potholes you can see on the above picture.

You may be wondering by now where I got my expertise in geology. I have a confession to make...I  just read the inscription by the Chasm and made a nice summary for you. :-)

The walk to the chasm was also quite interesting

Finally after hours and hours of bus we reached Mildford Sound Village and harbour where we boarded the boat that would take us throughout the fiord.

As it had been raining the place was filled with water falls. We didn't have the nice views you get on a sunny day but we did get the great views you get from the tens of waterfalls all round us

But Mildford Sound it's more than a bunch of waterfalls on a rainy day:

We also saw a bunch of seals

Last night we asked a couple of guys that just returned from doing Mildford Sound and they said that it had been raining all day but the buffet was very good. That was their summary!.

I have to say that the buffet was indeed very good. :-) but there were a lot of interesting things apart from the buffet and the views.

One of those things was the discovery centre.

Because of all the continuous rain there are a lot of materials coming from the forest above that end up in the water making it very dark and murky so much so that at 10 metres down there is the same light that in most places at 50.

With that in mind they built this place just so that they could trick the black coral (protected species) into believing it was deeper than it actually was and make it grow there so they could study it

This is a model of the place on the left and the thickness of the glass on the right

And below are some of the views from this artificial coral reef.

It was like diving but without getting wet! :-)


Travelling back to the harbour

Finally back at the harbour

The rest was another long trip by bus all the way to Queenstown...

Tomorrow it's yet another long bus trip Queenstown to Kaikorua (I don't even dare to ask about distances). I am certainly not looking forward to that although there'll be something I've been looking forward to:

I'll be meeting Bob again!.

Bob is a friend of mine from when I was working back in Thame.We haven't seen each other for at least 6 years since he left the UK with his family to emigrate here to NZ. I got in contact with him and very graciously he offered to take me from Christchurch to Kaikoura (2.5 hours driving each way!!).



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