Milford Sound

Hey Everybody!

This weekend was absolutely amazing. We went to a place called Milford Sound. I have a LOT of pictures (per usual) but it’s still worth googling if you have some spare time. There are amazing pictures of Milford Sound on the internet if you want to see more professional quality pictures than my camera allows. AMAZING!! 

We were supposed to go to Milford this Saturday, but I had made a mistake when booking our trip and I was convinced our bus left at 8am. We showed up at the place in Queenstown (After an hour and a half drive, and getting breakfast, mind you) at 7:30 am ready to go. The lady behind the desk then informed us that the bus left at 6:45. Silly me! Luckily, there were plenty of spots open for Sunday morning so they were able to switch us over, no problem! How nice of them, we were SO lucky. We joked about having a nice Saturday morning drive to get Starbucks, because we don’t have one in our town, haha!! Oh well, it worked out. We just switched our work and play days around so that we got all our lessons written on Saturday and played on Sunday!

We had another scare too on our way to Milford. The tour guide said that there had been a really bad rain storm the day before and the road to Milford Sound was closed because they were assessing if there was any damage to the road. This was a stressful issue because there had been a landslide about 2 years ago and they’re still cleaning it up. If the rain had dislodged anything, we wouldn’t be able to drive there. Luckily enough, AGAIN, there was no damage and we were able to make the trip. 

Apparently, we got VERY lucky with the timing of our trip too. The tour guide kept saying how lucky we were that we went on Saturday. I guess that it’s better to go to Milford Sound when it’s raining. (You wouldn’t think so, but it definitely is.) This is because i makes the waterfalls even better. It still rained a little bit on Sunday, but not nearly as much so we didn’t get soaking wet, but since it had rained so much on the way in, we got to see amazing waterfalls from the excess water! Seriously, how lucky are we??

Now onto some pictures!!

On the drive, we passed the places where The Lord of the Rings as well as the new movie, The Hobbit were filmed. These are “The Remarkables.” They are the mountains featured in The Lord of the Rings movies! Sorry for the poor quality, but they’re through a bus window!

These are the “mountains of middle earth” from the movie, The Hobbit!

One of our photo stops was a place called “Mirror Lake.” It’s one of the best places to get pictures of the amazing mountains in Fiordland National Park 

This is a place called “The Crevice.” It was formed by a HUGE glacier and of course, it’s amazing now! We saw a Kia (one of the native New Zealand parrots while we were there!)

These next two pictures are from opposite sides of our bus. On one side, we had an amazing river (I forget it’s name) and on the other side was an incredible waterfall!! If we wouldn’t have been in a bus, I probably could have reached out and touched the waterfall!!

WE SAW OUR FIRST MOUNTAIN WATERFALLS!! AMAZING!!!!!!

We were able to see some of the still standing landslide damage from 2009. It’s sad it’s happened but reminds you how powerful nature actually is!

Here are some pictures of one of our photo stops. We were able to drink from the river and actually we all filled up our water bottles from it before we moved on. Of course I took an opportunity to get a dance picture in in an amazing location and we saw another Kia hop onto our bus!!

Finally, we made it to Milford Sound. There wasn’t much sun all day, but the tour guides kept saying how “atmospheric” and “moody” it was that day. I couldn’t agree more. I don’t have bright, sunny pictures, but I have good memories of how truly MAGICAL Milford Sound is. It is like something out of a story book or a fairy tale. We took a cruise around the whole length of the fiord out all the way to the Tasman Sea and back again. I couldn’t get the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song out of my head! I felt like Captain Jack Sparrow! It was magical. 

Look at those pretty waterfalls!!

We're getting closer to them!!

And even closer!!

REALLY REALLY CLOSE!

On our way to the end of the Fiord and the Tasman Sea!

Cue Pirates of the Caribbean theme music. 

The next bit of land is Australia!

Magical!

BABY SEALS!!!

Another very beautiful waterfall that we got really close to!

I wasn't kidding!!! We literally went under it!

I hope you enjoyed my pictures from Milford Sound. This was probably my favorite part of New Zealand so far. I cannot believe how beautiful it really was, I had heard about it but I’m so happy I got to see it with my own eyes. :) I want to go back SO badly.