Travelogue

Milford Sound was one of the few stops on our trip that we planned well in advance. You have to, because it is an extremely popular destination on the South Island.

It is afterall, the 8th Wonder of the World - at least according to Rudyard Kipling when he visited here in the 1890s.

There is only one campground in Milford Sound at the Milford Sound Lodge and it books up quickly, so I booked it 4 months in advance. It cost $120 a night NZ dollars, which is about $70 U.S., so a bargain to be settled in the 8th Wonder of the World.

The most popular thing to do in Milford Sound is to take a cruise on the Sound (which is really a fjord, but I’ll explain later).

There are so many choices of cruise lines, but we chose the Small Boutique Cruise with Cruise Milford because they had smaller boats with much fewer passengers than most of the other ones. They advised that we book the first boat to go out at 8:30, because that was before the busloads of people arrived from Queenstown and Te Anau.

Another advantage of a small boat is that it can navigate closer to waterfalls, wildlife, and other points of interest, providing better opportunities for photography.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. First we had to get there. Although the drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound is only about 2 hours, it took us at least 4 hours with all the stops we made along the way.

The Milford Road is a major attraction in itself, winding through Fiordland National Park with stunning views of mountains, forests, valleys, and waterfalls along the way.

Our first stop was Eglinton Valley, or better known to Lord of the Ring trilogy fans as Middle Earth, as some of the scenes in The Fellowship of the Ring were filmed in the mountains surrounding the valley to represent the Misty Mountains.

The valley was carved out by glaciers over thousands of years creating the distinctive U-shape of a glacial valley.

The stark contrast between the golden tussock and grasslands and the dark mountains surrounding the valley was striking.

Some Middle-Earthlings from a tour bus had beat us out into the Valley, so I just included them in my photo.

A little further on, we stopped at Mirror Lake, known for its reflections of the surrounding Earl Mountains in the lake when conditions are calm and the lake is still.

Our next stop was a short walk along the Lake Gunn Nature trail, which passed through an ancient beech forest of moss-covered trees. A short side path led to a stony beach on Lake Dunn.

The next and last stop we made before getting to Milford Sound was Christie Falls, also known as Falls Creek Falls. From the parking right over the bridge, it’s just a short walk back to the falls, which can be seen right from the Milford Sound Road - no effort required.

However, a tour bus driver in the parking lot told us that if we went up the trail to the left side of the falls and hiked for about a quarter mile, we would come to a hidden falls that few people knew about.

Okay, a quarter mile didn’t sound too bad, but what a quarter mile it was. We were basically hiking through a jungle up a very steep barely marked trail, covered in roots from the surrounding trees. Those roots became my best friend because they served as handholds to get up and later down this ridiculous trail. Unlike Christie Falls there was much effort required, but it was worth it.

Continuing on, we came to the most challenging part of the road to Milford Sound - the Homer Tunnel. It’s single lane, so there is a traffic light to control which side can enter.

The tunnel is three quarter miles long with a 1-in-10 gradient, meaning for every 10 meters of horizontal distance, the tunnel rises or falls 1 meter. On the way to Milford Sound we were descending in the tunnel and on the way back we were ascending.

This combined with its single-lane width, narrowness, limited lighting, and hairpin bends immediately after exiting, makes it extremely stressful.

Herb was pretty much ready to just get to Milford Sound and park the car. Thank God, we decided to stay in Te Anau last night, rather than drive all the way here from Wanaka.
When we got to Milford Sound, it was too early to check into our campground, so we parked in the paid parking lot for cruise customers, and walked the short distance to the cruise ships, so that we would know where we had to be by 8:00 tomorrow morning for our cruise.
Then we took a walk on what turned out to be a very rewarding trail called the "Milford Foreshore Walk." This is where we got our first glimpse of Milford Sound’s iconic Mitre Peak, rising 5,522 feet steeply from the water.
The name “Mitre Peak” was given by Captain John Lort Stokes of HMS Acheron, when he was surveying this area for the British Crown in the 1840s, when New Zealand first became a colony of Great Britain.
He named it so because its shape reminded him of the mitre headwear worn by Christian bishops.
There was a lot of bang for our buck on this short walk. Besides Mitre Peak, there was Bowen Falls, where the Bowens River plunges from a 162-meter cliff directly into Milford Sound.
I can see why Rudyard Kipling called Milford Sound the 8th Wonder of the World and in 1990 it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
We walked back to the Campervan and drove to Milford Sound Lodge where we checked into our campsite. Milford Sound is actually a rainforest, so the campground was quite green and lush.
After a quick dinner, we walked back to the Foreshore Trail from our campground by going along a rocky trail to Deepwater Basin, past the Milford Sound Airport, and onto the trail.
The Sound with the sun setting over Mitre Peak and Bowens Falls was even more lovely than this afternoon.