Milford Sound

9th March Sunday
Woke up early to a 7am alarm, had breakfast and were ready for the Milford sound trip by 8:15 so went to the campsite gates to await the 8:30 pickup. It didn't arrive until 8:45 the driver apologised saying that he had to go back into town before picking us up, Chris had been pacing up and down for 15 minutes her normal patient self. We got on the coach to join all the young backpackers that the lady in the I-site had warned us about. There was one couple that could possibly have been backpackers the rest were respectable couples like ourselves or young and posh. Later the couple who could have been backpackers took out their cameras and iphones so if they were, they were very rich ones. The coach driver was brilliant and gave us a running commentary all the way there, and stopped at a few places on the way to Milford Sound including mirror lakes where we walked along a board-walk with some reflections of the mountains in the lake where we took some great pictures. It took just over 2 hours to get there. We got straight onto the boat to do the cruise which was everything we expected and more and the weather was beautiful too. We had to stop at traffic lights at a tunnel which was 1250 meters on the way for about 5 minutes and the driver told us that during the day the tunnel was controlled by the traffic lights but between 6pm and 8am it was a free for all. While we were waiting the driver told us that every year in March there was a race from where we were downhill throught the tunnel and it had special requirements, you had to run the race naked!!! We eventually arrived at the ferry moorings where we boarded the boat and started the cruise. The boat was big enough for us all and when we got underway we made ourselves a cup of coffee and went up on the top deck to take photos and the captain gave a commentary of what we were passing in the fiord. On the way up to the Tasmin sea we stopped very close to a seal colony were we watched the young seals playing. When we got to the Tasmin sea we turned around and came back down the other side of the fiord. The coach driver had told us that this was a freshwater fiord and that there were not many in the world. The captain on the boat told us that the first 3 meters of water was fresh on top of salt water and this was because of the rain water that ran down into the fiord from the hills. We went very close to a big waterfall and had to go inside the boat so that we did not get soaked. We then returned to the dock area and on leaving the boat asked what we had to do with some tickets that the coach


















driver had given us and they said that they were for lunch and it was part of the cost of the trip, so they made up 2 lunches and we had them later for dinner as we had taken sandwiches with us for the trip. On the way back we stopped at 3 or 4 places to take more photos and we got back to the campsite at 4:10 after a very nice trip.

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