Milford Sound

After our week in Queenstown we head off to Te Anau. This is the starting point for our trips to the Sounds in Fiordland. The Sounds are actually fiords and are drowned glacial valleys and Milford Sound is the most northerly. The road to Milford is 120km from Te Anau and we set off taking in the Mirror Lakes on the way. The journey involves driving through the Homer Tunnel which is 1200 metre long and has a 1 in 10 gradient down. As we emerge on the other side we snake down the mountainside to Milford. It is an incredible place the mountains are just huge. One of the these peaks is called Mitre Peak and is a staggering 1694m above the water.

We are going out on kayaks for our Milford Sound adventure and the sun is actually shining today. We are taken up the sound just beyond Stirling Falls and from here we start our return journey. As we are doing this in the late afternoon, the cruises are finishing off and the flights are nearly all gone and we pretty much are alone on the sound. It is an amazing place, the height of the mountainous walls are so incredibly high it is not possible to capture this on the camera. We get to kayak into the falling Stirling Falls (which are 155m high), which is a bit hairy as the wind generated by the falling water is about 50km/h, so we get pretty wet but it is amazing.

For any Wolverine fans, Stirling Falls are the falls featured in X Men origins: Wolverine where Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) jumps off the waterfall.