Milford Sound
Trip Start
Oct 03, 2010
1
43
77
Trip End
Sep 06, 2011
Milford Sound, South Island, New Zealand
Saturday, January 22, 2011
day 111-113
MILFORD SOUND
After setting off from Queenstown we headed for Te Anau This little place is the gateway town to Fiordland, in particular Milford Sound (MS). You can book activities such as Sea Kayaking, Helicopter rides, boat trips and organise guided walks.
We had decided that we wanted to do some sea Kayaking whilst in MS so we chose to go with a company called Rosco’s MS Kayaking. We would definitely recommend them to anybody as we had a wonderful time and our guide was not only professional but a really good fun too.
There are some famous tramps you can do around the Fiordland including the Milford track (to be booked months in advance for hut space), the Kepler track, the Routburn track and many many more. Some people pay up to $3000 to take a guided walk around the Milford track, but it is much cheaper if you are an experienced tramper to book the huts. The Milford track tends to get booked up very early but apparently the Kepler and Routeburn tracks are equally as good. We decided to do day walks off the Milford Road. One called Key Summit treated us with sublime panoramic views over three valley systems (see pics). It also helped that we had wonderful weather that day. When we reached the summit we met a Scottish couple called Andy and Anne. We got chatting to them and found out that they were also travelling for a while and that their itinery included some of the same countries as us. We must have been chatting for about an hour swapping travelling stories, the time flew by. We recommended that they do sea kayaking and the next day they popped over to the DOC camp site to thank us. We had also gone kayaking that day but with a different group. The weather was perfect, there was not a cloud in the sky! We got up early and drove from our DOC site to the basin of MS, the drive itself is wonderful. We started by being taken by boat into the fiord and then being dropped off with kayak’s near seal’s where we got kayak right up to them (see pic’s and video). Then we paddled down to a waterfall and tried to get under but the spray was far to great and we ended up being pushed out. We then continued down the fiord spotting different birds and ate our lunch on the kayaks. We then got all the kayaks grouped together and our guide with the help of others in the group put up a sail and we let the wind take us down the fiord. Finally we were guided through down through a lush rainforest (see pics). This was a perfect day for us.
We stayed at the same DOC site (Lake Gunn) for 3 days. Partly because of the views. They were mesmerising. When the lake was calm you could see reflection of the mountains in the water (see pic).
The lake was also good for swimming and washing in. Yes both of us got in. on the last day we saw a 6ft eel swimming around. So maybe if we had seen that on the first day we would not have gone swimming!
