Majestic Milford Sound

Milford Sound is actually a fjord in Fjordland National Park on the south island of New Zealand. It has often been called the 8th Wonder of the World and is one of the world's top travel destinations. The pictures you may have seen in books and on postcards are rare-- with rain occurring on the majority of days and totals each year of nearly 300 inches, this is one of the rainiest spots in the world.
In the few weeks before we arrived, they had received over 400 mm of rain (this is more than Denver, CO gets in an ENTIRE year!) and many of the grainte cliff side trees and plummeted to the sea. While we had expected it to rain while we were there, we just prayed the weather would be okay enough for us to fly. The previous two days of flights were grounded and we knew we didn't have time in our itinerary to make the 6+ hour drive each way to see Milford.

To our surprise, our prayers were answered as we awoke to clear, calm blue skies. Our shuttle took us to the Queenstown airport at 6:50 am (yikes!) where we got prepped for our flight to Milford. We departed early with fine conditions, so our pilot took us an extra long route where we saw hanging valleys, cascading waterfalls, alpine lakes, and jagged mountains. These granite mountains reminded us a lot of the peaks and glacier icefields out of Juneau, AK. Many of the lakes were just a magnificent teal-color.

As we landed in Milford, a bus took us to the cruise terminal where we boarded a small boat that went all the way to the Tasman Sea. As we departed, we immediately had a great view of Mitre Peak which rises almost 1700 m out of the sea. It's believed to be one of world's highest mountains to rise directly out of the sea. We also enjoyed the 160m Bowel Falls which drops from a hanging valley.

Shortly after, we even spotted my mom's favorites-- the bottlenose dolphin. A whole pod of them joined alongside our boat as we cruised past Sinbad Gully on our way to the Fairy Falls.

As we past the entrance to Milford (Dale's Point), we headed out to the Tasman Sea. We got to see the St Anne point lighthouse before heading back into the sounds. We stopped to see the seals at Seal Rock and enjoyed views of the taller peaks: Mt Pembroke and Cascade Peaks. The two hour cruise ended with another sighting of bottlenose dolphins. Apparently, they only see these guys about one time per week. We sure did luck out with our day at Milford!
On our flight back, we enjoyed the green and forested Tasman Sea coastline before taking a different route back to Queenstown. We enjoyed the Earl and Alisa mountains and saw more turquoise lakes. The arrival into Queenstown treated us with fantastic aerial views of Lake Wakatipu, the Remarkables, and the Queenstown golf course.

We had a wonderful time on our flight and cruise through Milford and consider ourselves very blessed to have had such nice weather. We truly thought this was the most beautiful place in New Zealand. It combined all the best of Alaska's Misty Fjords NP and the spectacular NaPali coast in Kauai. God sure does good work!