Sailing the Sound

Kia Ora!

 Doubtful Sound or Milford Sound? KC and I have visited both and without a doubt we thought Doubtful Sound was the more impressive journey. But we chatted with tourists who spoke glowingly of the Milford experience, not so much the boat trip, but of the bus trip into Milford. In the end, Milford won my companions over. It is by far the more popular tourist site in New Zealand and one of the most visited in the world. (Equally famous is the Milford Track, a 4-day back packing tramp over the mountain to the Sound. I long to make that trek yet.)

The young man who recommended the bus trip was correct. The tour added several interesting stops on the way to Milford and on the way back. The boat trip on the Sound was as I remembered it: large boat, huge number of tourists, quite commercialized. Nevertheless, one cannot help but appreciate the beauty of the sea and mountains, the many waterfalls plummeting down the mountainsides. The boat captain took the craft close enough to spray the passengers on the front decks and up close to the group of fur seals resting on the rocks.

One of many waterfalls

Seals ignore tourists

Technically, none of the bodies of water in Fiordland are Sounds. All of them are carved by glacier activity and are correctly fjords. Early explorers, such as the famous Captain Cook, called them sounds and the name stuck.

Sailing Milford Sound

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"black" coral

 As the boat trip ended, we entered a floating museum with a circular stairway that led about 10 meters down to a viewing chamber under water. We could see various underwater flora and sea life. We learned that this area of the fjord was a microclimate where a form of coral flourished. While the coral is called black coral, it is actually white. The name came accidentally as when early scientists collected specimens, they were black. What they learned later is that they had dead coral. The living coral of this species is white.

Temperate rain forest foliage

On the bus trip from and to Te Anau, we stopped to fill our water bottles from a mountain stream, saw a kea (large green parrot) in the parking lot, and hiked through the rain forest to cross a mountain stream.

So in the end, do I still think Doubtful Sound is the better choice? Yes, for a fjord trip it is. But the bus trip to Milford makes up for the drama Milford Sound lacks.

Next we take on Queenstown.

Cheers,
Kiwi Traveler