Milford Sound

We spent 6 hours cruising through Milford Sound in bright sunny weather, which was great…but also not so great. One of the biggest attrac­tions of Milford (and the biggest reason I was dying to go) are all the ephemeral water­falls that cover the steep walls of the sound whenever it rains. Fjordland gets up to 7 metres of rain annually, so I had high hopes, but the weather was cloud free, so we had to only imagine what it would have looked like. Hard to complain about nice weather, but I was hoping for rian. The nice weather was good for cruising though

These were taken as we stopped along the way. This is called the “Mirror Lakes” for obvious reasons

The water was super clear (this one’s for you Dad):

We did finally make it to Milford Sound (which is, tech­ni­cally, a fjord BTW). This was our ship for the day:

One of two permanent water­falls in Milford:

See the little ship at the bottom of the last photo? That’s for scale That is a 3 level cruise ship. This next waterfall was fun…the ship actually nosed right into it, soaking everyone on the foredeck

We even saw some seals

It’s a strange place. The natu­ralist on the ship described the unique porperties of the fjord. It is as deep as the cliff walls are high, and they go almost straight down…this is why we were able to get so close to the water’s edge and nose under the waterfall. It gets so much rain here every year, and it is so quickly drained into the fjord, that the salt water of the ocean and the fresh water of the rain never totally mix. This layer of fresh water over the salt has an effect on light pene­tration, leading to many vari­eties of deep-water vege­tation surviving quite close to the surface.

A faci­nating spot. We arrived back at our campsite as the sun was setting…

…and prepared for the next day’s cruise, this time at Doubtfull Sound.

…Mike