Fjord carved by a glacier
Milford Sound is actually a fjord which was carved by a glacier. The fjord, which is between 500 m and nearly 3 km wide, reaches a depth of 320 m at its deepest point, from where the adjacent mountains partly rise very steeply, up to 80 degrees, with Mitre Peak rising up to 1680 m.
It is located on the the Southwest coast of New Zealand in the area called Fjordland, which gets a lot of rain all year along. Guides say that these makes the fjords even more beautiful because so you can see a lot of waterfalls. In 2019 it received around 1 million visitors. This makes the sound one of New Zealand's most-visited tourist spots even with its remote location and long journey times from the nearest population centres.
A lot of driving
With the rental car Brittany, my friend from the US, picked me up from my hostel in Dunedin and she drove me 4 hours to Te Anau, a small town in the southwest of the island. It is beautifully situated on the lake of the same name. The town is the starting point for tours to Milford Sound. For 9 am on the morning we had booked a 2-hour boat trip over the fjord there. On the map the distance looks quite small. Yet often the distances on the map are deceptive in New Zealand. And thus it takes over 2 hours from Te Anau to Milford Sound. Some tourists even missed their tour because they underestimated the distance.
Clouds covering the fjords
Hence the alarm clock rang already shortly before 6 am. During the trip it rained constantly. Not unusual in this part of the world, one of the rainiest places in the world. The weather at the destination proved to be no different. Fortunately we had refrained from renting a kayak, which is what many tourists do here. That would have been a total bummer!
I had expected more of the Milford Sounds. The clouds were hanging so low that you could hardly see the grace of the majestic fjords. Our guide told us that we were very unlucky, because the 2 weeks before it was almost only sunny weather. At least the rain caused quite a lot of waterfalls. I could only imagine how great the fjords look if you can actually see them.
Milford Sound is also home to a variety of marine mammals, including seals which we saw lying on a big rock. Apart from that, we only watched animals of the species "tourist" as there's indeed quite a lot of them here.
