Today we bused to Milford Sound on a drizzly day to take a few hours day cruise on Milford Sound, perhaps New Zealand’s most popular tourist destination. It was a chilly and drizzly day. This is a harsh weather part of the country. The mountains are high, the glacial valleys on land are wide and flat between the mountains. Some times of the year sun doesn’t reach one side of the valley.
We drove through the vast Fiordlands National Park, and along winding mountain roads. I wore five layers and regretted not bringing my rain pants on the boat.
When it rains, visitors see bonus waterfalls. They will stop shortly after the rain ceases, and the sound only has three permanent falls. We saw a couple of dolphins near the boat, and there were a few seals in the water near a particular rock called “seal rock.”
Lunch was included, and shouldn’t we, in the US, take a memo from NZ and practice using “bento boxes,” that can be returned for such concessions? The boxes were a major improvement over clamshell single use plastic.
I loved our afternoon walk on a short nature trail. Once again we were in a beech (Nothofagus) forest, and moss and smaller ferns dominated the understory. The trail was absolutely carpeted with green.
Without a doubt, these woods looked enchanted. The track was soft and any off track spots had quite a bit of cushioning too. Along one fallen log, small ferns were growing, upside down.
Many of the beech trees had very large burls. Burls are thought to be a tree’s reaction to an infection. My father, who was a wood turner in his retirement, loved to work burls into bowls. These burls would be big enough to house a small child or large dog if turned:
Once we were back in Te Anu, we had a quick turnaround to reassemble and walk to the cinema to see Shadowlands, a thirty minute film about Fiordlands. The footage was shot by helicopter, and showed areas of the park that are completely untouched by humans. It’s very well done, and moving.
Fiordsland is a UNESCO world heritage site. The version of the film we saw was narrated, but here is a free YouTube version of the footage, with a Pink Floyd soundtrack:
