Milford Sound - Fiordland

We set out at 7:15 am for a cruise on the Milford Sound. Milford is one of New Zealand's famous fiords. We were staying at Te Anau, about 2-2,5hours driving from the Milford jetty. And we had booked a cruise for 9:45 cruise opting to beat the crowds to it. The weather looked unexpectedly lovely and sunny that morning.

The famous Mitre Peak, hidden in the clouds

But that didn't last very long. As we drove north, into the mountains, the road became quickly very misty and wet. By the time we came out of the Milford tunnel it was proper drizzling weather. We'll never wonder again why the West Coast is commonly referred to as Wet Coast. 

We're told the annual rainfall in the Milford Sound is almost 7meters! One of the wettest inhabited places on earth... About 182 rainy days a year, so we had about 50-50 chance, not taking into account that spring is the rainy season,

A few of the thousands of waterfalls 

The upside of all that rain? The gorgeous waterfalls of course! Because the rock doesn't retain any water, many waterfalls will stop 30 minutes after the rain ceases. We saw plenty of waterfalls, and most were absolutely pumping! 

Because the fiord walls are very steep, both above and under water, the boats can get right up to the walls. Sometimes touching the trees there, and once underneath a waterfall! 

Nature's hydro power

I sat inside for a fair bit of the trip, and suddenly I saw two dolphins next to the boat, very cool. Unfortunate they were gone before I could alert Rodie, who stood outside on the bow. 

The boat navigated the fiord right up to the border of the Tasman Sea, and there we could see another surprise: penguins! 

Can you spot the penguin?

Our guide told us these were yellow-eyed penguins, one of the rarest species on earth. We were delighted that we had our binoculars on us, cause it was hard to spot these birds from far off (the cruise boats luckily aren't allowed to disturb them). As we watched we saw two penguins. Clumsily hopping on the rocks on their bulbous pink feet. The bright yellow colour next to their eyes was very well visible too.

Penguin in the water

We watched as the bird made it to the water, and plunged in. Once in they look like a semi-sunken duck. We were quite excited to see one of these very rare penguins. The only thing is... 

A few days later we went to a dedicated viewing hide to watch yellow-eyed penguins and were (again) lucky enough to see them. And they definitely looked different! The pink feet were similar, but the yellow markings not. After some googling we believe we saw yellow-crested (Fiordland) penguins at Milford Sound. 

Sun at last

As we reach the Tasman Sea we distinguished a tiny patch of blue in the clouds, the sun had decided to come out and joins us. As we headed back to the jetty, we saw some other boats heading out. Even though we knew the surrounding cliffs were high, seeing the bits being dwarfed by them really gave some perspective to it all. 

 Seal rock

On our way out we has passed a rock strewn with seals on the south side, and now we passed another one on the north side: imaginatively named Seal Rock. Another batchelor fur seal hangout. 

I had never imagined how frequently we would see these animals!

Fur seal on display

At noon we were back at the jetty. We drove back to Te Anau, but now had time for some stops on the way. We stopped at The Chasm. A gorgeous short walk, with some impressive river views. And the place where we spotted our first Kea! 

Other good stops were Knobs Flat, the Mirror Lakes and Te Anau Downs.

Mirror Lakes