Milford Sound

This mornings departure was very early again and our destination Milford Sound.
The trip was pretty uneventful until we reached Garston. Which claims to be New Zealands most inland village. And it is the point where the Bottom Bus and the KiwiExperience bus to Milford Sound meet up.

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How they managed it that we had a wait of less than 5 minutes I don’t understand. So we where still getting our luggage out of one bus when the second bus arrived.

And then we had a long drive to Te Anau where we had a short stop for coffee. The drive goes on through some nice mountain vistas, some small mirror lakes which where unfortunately not that mirror as we had a little bit of wind. The gap with it’s waterfall was not to shabby either.

But so far no Keas where to be seen. These parrots are very clever and are said to have the intelligence of a 4 year old. And they love to take apart the rubber on cars and steal things.

The tunnel through to Milford Sound which is not a sound at all but a fjord brought a little bit of a fast hopping as we tried to be out of the bus, take our pictures and be in the bus in the time of one red light.
We almost made it. 🙂

After the tunnel the keas did show up and we could watch them some.
Unfortnately the waterfalls that cascade down the mountains where not that big today as we had nice weather and no rainfall for the last day.

Down at the water we boarded one of the ships and went onto a cruise through the fjord past the lion and one that I dubbed the elephant.

Now you would think that the best weather for pictures is sunshine and no clouds. – Unfortunately this is only very partially true for the Milford Sound. Here you need the rain or the main attraction – the waterfalls all around – seize up within 3-4 hours as there is no reservoir in the mountains to keep them going.
Therefore we had a nice and windy day out but only the bigger waterfalls showed us their trickle.
That did not stop our ship to guide its front into one of the waterfalls. And everyone who wanted to could go and have a shower in the spray.
But this was just some spray and not a waterfall like at Foz de Iguazu so no extra clothing necessary.

The very green one mountain in the last picture usually has thousands of small waterfalls on them. But not today.

On our way back we stopped at the same stop as in the morning and then we had a long drive back to Queenstown.
This being the only drive that actually brought us in late and let us see the sunset while driving.