Fiordland

Even though I’m so very, very tired, I am making the time to record today’s experience and posting it for your reading pleasure. All these uber- early mornings are starting to pile up and wear me down. 8 AM is now sleeping in for me. Holidays can be exhausting! (I’m half joking here)

OK. I have the answer to yesterday’s post confusion… A Sound is an inlet, as stated. A fiord (aka fjord) is an inlet that has been carved out by a glacier, also stated yesterday. This is the main difference. A sound has not been created by a glacier. Milford Sound is inaccurately named, as it in, in fact, a fiord. It should be Milford Fiord. It was discovered by a Welshman named Grono and he actually named it Milford Haven, after his hometown. Cook missed this entrance into Fiordland when he explored here previous to Grono.

Since the fiord is created by a glacier the walls of the rocks surrounding it are cut deeply. As a result, the boat on the cruise I took, sailing around and out of Milford Sound (Piopiotahi – its Maori name), was able to edge itself right up to the shear cliff walls, almost close enough that we could touch them, were it not for the huge waterfalls that we were edging up to check out. Wow!! Yesterday it rained a lot, which made the waterfalls more full and spectacular. There were hundreds of them – some permanent, some just temporary falls from the water that either collected from the rain or from the snow melt (anywhere above 600 meters last night got snow). Despite the cold weather, despite the fact that it rains here about 200 days of the year, today I think I fell in love with Fiordland.

I met more Canuks on today’s trip. I seem to be meeting more and more these days. Funny that. I ended up taking a little tour with a little tour company and really enjoyed it. The ten of us left Te Anau early in the morning and drove to Milford on the only road that can take you there, Milford Road, through the very historical Homer Tunnel – a mountain pass that took 19 years to complete due to a myriad issues. It even took until 1992 before the final sections of this road were sealed (paved with chip seal) – that’s how remote this place is. The Homer is a 1.5 km long, one-way tunnel, where you must wait for a traffic light to turn green before you can take your turn (if you miss the light the wait is about 15 minutes for the next turn – we got green both ways). Arriving in Milford we took our 2.5 hour cruise, then Andrew, our lovely Welsh-born, NZ-converted guide collected us and took us to the Hollyford Track where we entered the start of the 4-day tramp at the suspension bridge (no plans to actually take on the full hike) and tramped for 30 minutes to a lovely waterfall, as if we hadn’t already seen enough of them for one day! Haha! Today’s tour should have been called Waterfall Day Tour. We stopped in a few neat places on the way out and back to snap gorgeous photos of the mountains that are newly snow covered. This place has a high avalanche risk in the winter. Particularly near the Homer Tunnel. After our mini-tramp we headed off to have tea and biscuits near a little river. Andrew made the tea in a neat little camp kettle at the river’s edge using the water straight from the source with no treatment necessary. Nearly all the water here is clear as any water I’ve ever seen.

Today was one of those 100-photo days. This is one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever seen. It reminded me that it’s been far too long since I’ve seen the Rockies – the mountains down here looked a lot like them with the snow on top. They aren’t quite as big, but they are as beautiful. This isn’t a place that I could live – too cold and rainy – but wow! This is a really nice place to visit! I’ll post photos the next time I connect.