We STILL wonder what kayaking is like...

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  Milford Sound, South Island, New Zealand
Monday, April 6, 2009

To get from Queenstown to Milford Sound might LOOK easy on a map as Milford Sound is only a short distance to the northwest of Queenstown... However there are a FEW mountains inbetween there and that meant that we had to drive in a BIG "U"-shape to get there. 100 km south, followed by 60 km westwards and then finally 120 km north again parallel to the first 100 km that we drove.

The route itself is quite picturesque and the roads are amazingly empty as only tourists drive in this area it seems, which allowed us to enjoy the journey and have a few stops along the way. These were mostly on the last 120 km of the drive as we were in the Fiordland National Park by then (something Milford Sound is a part of).

One of the first stops we made was at the Eglinton Flats where you can see mountains all around

1 - The Moderate Mirror Lake

. We had a brief stop there to 'look around' ;) The reason we did this, and why this is worth doing, is that the Eglinton Flats is a huge flat (DUH!) area covered in grass that gives an impressive full 360 degree vista of the mountains on all sides.

Shortly after the Eglinton Flats we came to the Mirror Lakes, one of the most recommended stops along the road from Queenstown to Milford Sound. We found them a tad disappointing as they are more ponds than what we would call lakes. They DO reflect really well, but with all the fish and ducks in the "lakes" the water was not calm enough for us to get the amazing sight there that postcards and travel-guides advertise. Also, eventhough it is called Mirror Lakes, it seems like there is really only ONE pond there... Which we found a tad misleading...
The fact that this is directly next to the road means that it is still a nice spot to stop and have a gander. It would just have been nice if it had matched our expectations a bit more. (Which is not ITS fault, but more likely the fault of the marketing and PR in the region ;))

Homer Tunnel (No relation to Homer Simpson we think!) is a tunnel that we were warned about up front as people claimed it was a particularly SCARY tunnel. When we got the tunnel we noticed many people parked next to it and taking pictures of the tunnel OPENING (EH?). At this point it is worth mentioning that during the day (with all the tour-busses that traverse this stretch) the tunnel alternates between the two directions of traffic. Since we didn't find the tunnel really worth a picture (sorry ;)) we just queued up to pass through the tunnel. The flow of traffic in the tunnel is regulated by traffic lights that are on a 15 minute (!) cycle

2 - The Most We Saw Of Milford Sound

. Which, to clarify, means that when we queued up to go through the tunnel (it was a red light when we arrived), we ended up having to wait almost 15 minutes before we could drive through it!
Now, if the tunnel was rather long, and it would take traffic aprox. 10 minutes to pass through, then this might have made sense... But this tunnel is only 1270 meters long!!! This stretch we drove in 2 minutes or so, during which we kept wondering why THIS was supposed to be so scary.

Comfortably driving onwards now that we had faced and tackled the dreaded Homer Tunnel (!), we made one more stop along this stretch of highway. This was at The Chasm, where a large waterfall plummets into a narrow chasm (DUH!). It is an impressive natural phenomenon that we would have loved to share with you all, but taking pictures of this is really rather pointless as all we really saw was a big black hole that water plummeted into. The roar of the waterfall could definitely be heard for hundreds of meters, so we ASSUME that it is a very deep chasm... But that is just a guess really ;)
Instead, we opted for taking a few pictures of the stream before it went over the edge. The river here had a small side-arm that we both thought was rather picturesque with its mossy stones and miniature waterfalls

3 - State Highway 94

.

At the end of the day we arrived at Milford Sound and decided to have a quick look at the actual fjord, although it was already getting quite dark. Little did we know that this was going to be our nicest view of the waterfront. We had booked to go kayaking on the Milford Sound fjord the next day early in the morning... But... Can you guess?

Indeed... At 4 in the morning we were woken by the weather... Now let us briefly say how EXTREME this is as we both usually sleep through anything. Alarm clocks, vacuum cleaners and even an earthquake in the case of Martijn (small one, but still... it counts...). What woke us was the HOWLING of the wind and the rain hitting the roof. We looked out the window and saw that half the parking lot was now a mud-puddle and that the rain was actually traveling more horizontal than vertical. By this time we were already suspecting that the kayaking was going to be canceled on us as there seemed little point in going out onto the water in the rain and heavy winds.

In the morning we made a quick drive to the waterfront to survey the conditions and we simply concluded that if it was not canceled that we were not doing it anyway as neither of us has ever kayaked before

4 - Wild Water Rafting For Mice ;)

. Plus we were there to see the surroundings and enjoy the experience... Not to be blown out to sea and end up in Australia!
When the 'guides' arrived they did indeed say it was canceled for the day because of the weather. Amusingly enough they only mentioned that the wind was why it was canceled, not the rain. Leading us to believe that they would have headed out in the rain if only it was less windy... *shudder*

We had booked for the next night in Milford Sound under the assumption that we would be exhausted from our kayaking experience. As this was now no longer going to be the case, and because there is really NOTHING to do in Milford Sound when it rains, we decided to make a few phone-calls and see if we could re-book and shift some bookings around for the next few days.
Luckily everyone was extremely helpful and there were no problems with moving our reservations up one day (and in the case of one hotel even adding an extra day of course). After this all we quickly packed up and tried to get everyting into the car in record time (to avoid flooding of the trunk/boot) and left Milford Sound.

On our way out we were greeted by hundreds (or maybe even thousands) of waterfalls coming down the mountain sides due to the immense amounts of rain that had fallen. This was an amazingly pretty sight, but, since it was STILL coming down by the bucket load, we didn't want to soak our cameras in order to get a few pictures. (We prefer not taking pictures through car windows (especially our dirty ones), sorry :P)

As the rain didn't let up at all during the day we just drove straight to Invercargill and got a nice early night on a really good bed :D.

Some day we WILL find out what kayaking is like... We hope... :P

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5 - Guess Where This Is :P	6 - Hello!!! O.... o... o...	7 - Is That Rock Leaking?	8 - Is It On Fire?

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