Milford Sound

Having had fun in Queenstown, we heard reports that Milford Sound was expecting rain, so off we went. Going there basically involves driving about 120 km down a cul de sac, a New Zealand speciality. They have several very popular tourist destinations on cul de sacs.

True to the predictions it was quite a bad day when we drove into Milford Sound, resulting in us not being impressed with the scenery at all, though you do have to go through an impressive tunnel that I think is about 1km long and only wide enough for one lane between its quite rugged walls. There’s a 15 minute wait for the traffic lights at either end. Even with the bad weather there hadn’t actually been much rain and we arrived to find out they had been predicting rain for the last few weeks and nearly none had arrived. This is quite unusual for a place that boasts that its annual rainfall is 6 metres.

So, after getting quite annoyed at the number of sandflies (I’ll explain more later) around we drove part of the way back out the road and stopped at Gunns Camp, a lovely little campsite pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It is right beside the Hollyford River, where the others had an interesting day paddling the next day while Liz and I went back to Te Anau, the nearest town, to buy groceries as it turned out none of us were really prepared to stay a few days away from civilisation! It did give us a much better impression of Milford Sound though as it was a much nicer day and the views really were quite remarkable.

Meanwhile, the others did the Falls Creek section of the Hollyford twice, with the river gods claiming Aislings paddle on the first trip. Later that evening the boys did the Moraine Creek section further down. It’s a great river in that most of it is beside the road, a rare thing in this country, so it can be scouted and you can also get out easily if you want! Sean and I got the bikes out also and cycled further down the road to see the Humbolt Falls, a very impressive high waterfall.

The next day, after the boys ran the Moraine Creek section again, we headed back to Queenstown.