More Milford...

I haven't had internet access for 2 nights but the adventures have continued! lol We are now back in Christchurch and catch our flight home early tomorrow. Since I've last posted, we've been to Invercargill which is right in the south of this island and then spent 2 nights in Dunedin.
So now some photos taken on the cruise through Milford Sound...this cruise was one and a half hours of quiet serenity...it was raining and it was cold but that didn't detract from the beauty of this place.

We've just left the dock area here and see our first waterfall in the fiord 

The waterfalls are magnificent

The Tasman Sea is just ahead

DH saw a helicopter carrying a load and managed to get this photo

 Rocks show where there have been avalanches on the fiord's wall...

And these rock falls are handy spots for the seals to sunbake...but there was no sun on this day and we only saw 3 juvenile seals...

The boat actually goes into the fiord wall and sails in the spray from the Stirling Waterfall which is  about 480 feet high!!

Now this is a photo of the Homer Tunnel from the other side...built into a solid rock face of the mountain

Roadworks near the Homer Tunnel

 One stop on the way 'home' was this camping area which had beautiful views.

 Now we 'did Milford' the easy way...many people hike this area but it's tough going. There are lots of walking tracks in NZ for those fit people! :-) Our cruise had 2 busloads of tourists...our small group and a larger group of Taiwanese, Indonesian and Chinese tourists. 

On the road to Milford Sound...

On Thursday we took a tour to Milford Sound which is in the south eastern part of the South Island. The area is also known as Fiordland and today Simon, our guide/driver explained the difference between a fiord and a sound. A fiord is made by glacier action gouging out valleys. When the ice retreats, the sea floods the area and it is known as a fiord. The ice is believed to have retreated from this area about 17000 years ago.
A 'Sound' is a a body of water which is not made by glacier action...it can be from rising sea levels or subsidence of land. So Milford Sound is really Milford Fiord, lol.

We noticed that  the sunrise made the sky red...and the old saying of my mother came to mind...'red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning' and how true that was to be. Yep it rained constantly :-( But the views were still magnificent. We booked with a different company to the one we used in 2004 and we had more stops at points of interest along the way this time. So the trip there took just on 2 hours.

This was our first photos' stop....wonderful views of the mountains but the grasses in the front of the photo are some native grasses that were almost wiped out by white settlement for farming and grazing.

Our next stop was at Mirror Lakes...a beautiful spot...

Looking the other way at Mirror Lakes...

Our next stop was at a waterfall with the most amazing blue coloured water...

The other side of the road from the blue waterfall...the water there is blue as well.

By now the rain was really pouring but we had another feature to see, The Chasm. There was a LOT of water going through it!

Then we reached the Homer Tunnel...it is a one-way road and we arrived at a red light. So Simon, our driver, allowed people to alight from the bus and take photos.

No matter where you go...roadworks!!!

The previous photos look as though it wasn't still raining...but it was! When you come out of the tunnel, there is steep descent, as the exit of the tunnel is halfway up a mountain, even though the tunnel dips down when you enter from the other side. From there we still had about a 20 km drive to where we would board the cruise vessel to travel the Milford Sound/Fiord. In my next post I'll show photos taken during the hour and half cruise out to just near where the Fiord meets the Tasman Sea.