Milford Sound is about 290km from Queenstown and the drive takes arouund 4 hours. The stretch between Te Anau and The Sound is New Zealand’s most dangerous road and visitors and tour operators are encouraged to travel there by coach to reduce the traffic and leave the narrow, twisting and turning roads to someone with the experience of dealing with them.
Milford Sound is located in the Fiordland National Park. At 1.2 million hectares it is the largest of New Zealand’s National parks. it was awarded world heritage stars in 1986. Much of it consists of temperate rainforest clinging to the sides of steep mountains. Much is uncharted, it is estimated that 75% of it has never been walked on by a human.
The journey into the park takes you past some incredible scenery and a series of lakes that are known to reflect the surrounding landscape hence their name, Mirror Lakes.
Technically speaking Milford Sound is actually a fiord not a sound as it was formed by glaciers. A Sound on the other hand results when a river valley is flooded by the sea. The early settlers to the region were perhaps not up to date with their geographical terms so the name stuck and has remained unchanged.
Milford Sound is the wettest place in New Zealand with an average of 250 inches of rain a year. It rains on about 200 days a year so you are more likely to visit on a wet day than a dry one. Our visit was no exception, it rained for the duration of our visit.
The coach from Queenstown arrives in the early afternoon and passengers immediately board a boat for a two hour cruise. The journey takes you along the sound and out into the Tasman Sea and back again, a round trip of approximately 30km. if you are lucky enough to do it in the rain you see the waterfalls, and there are many of them, in full flow. If its dry then you see the majesty of the mountain peaks but only two waterfalls. We got the former, most of the peaks were shrouded in mist giving the place an etherial, ghostly feel. Very atmospheric.
On our trip we were lucky to see a pod of Bottlenosed dolphins both on our journey out of the sound and again on our return. Indeed on our return one swam right alongside the vessel and you were able to see just how big this particular species of dolphin is. Seals were also in evidence, basking on the rocks and not very lively at all.
Despite its isolation a procession of coaches head into the national park every day. One can only wonder what the traffic congestion would be like if everyone went by car. In total it is a twelve hour round trip with a couple of breaks along the way. A long and tiring day but well worth it.