Milford Sound

New Zealand is a bit of a show-off.  Isn’t it enough that the countryside is full of stunning views, the people are over-the-top friendly, and the whole place feels pristinely free of  trash and pollution?  No, New Zealand apparently isn’t content with all that – it has to show off even more by having places like Milford Sound.

Milford Sound is one of the most beautiful locations in New Zealand.  It’s an epic day trip from Queenstown (12-13 hours on a bus and boat.)  Essentially you drive through the massive national park, take a cruise through the sound out to the ocean, then turn around and come back.  It makes for a long day, and the scenery is overwhelmingly gorgeous the entire time.

Being trapped on a bus at the mercy of the driver meant I couldn’t stop to take photos in all the places I really wanted to, but that’s just the nature of a bus tour.  We’re actually lucky we were even able to get through on a bus.  For many days before and after our trip the roads in the national park were closed due to rock slides.

This was our super classy tour bus.  Misspelling words is one of their quirks.  What do you think, does the pinup girl on the side rescue it from being ordinary or push it over the edge into completely absurd?  Yeah, I think so, too.These lupins are everywhere along the route.  The purple, pink and yellow variations pop against the lush greens. Don’t even get me started on how clear and blue all the streams and lakes are.  It’s a little hard to tell in photos, but the water is bright teal underneath the white caps.  You can drink the water from the rivers, they are so clean.  (which is more than I can say for the tap water in Central America.)I have no idea what these guys are, but they’re fuzzy and cool.Milford Sound gets an enormous amount of rainfall during the year.  Since the mountains are almost entirely comprised of rock and have no soil to absorb the water, the runoff creates hundreds of waterfalls all over the park.  We were there on a rain-free day, so there were fewer than usual.  Which means we could still see dozens just from the road (if you hike in you can see lots more.)This is the view from the end of the Milford Sound, where we boarded our boat for a two hour cruise out to the Tasman Sea.Snow capped mountains and rocky walls = more waterfalls.
Are you ready for the excessive waterfall photos?  Here we go…Halfway through our cruise a group of dolphins swam up alongside our boat to escort us around.  The water was so clear and blue you could see them really well, even when they weren’t jumping out of the water to impress the tourists.At one point, our boat pulled up close to the waterfall below.  The spray of the water created a double rainbow above the ocean water, through which the dolphins were jumping.  Really, New Zealand?  It’s like an embarrassment of riches around here.  You might want to stop showing off and making all the other countries feel bad.

More beautiful New Zealand still to come.