Milford Sound

Another early morning (what else is new :) ). We met James by 7 and hit the road. One of the must see sights of New Zealand is the fjord lands national park. It's in the south west corner of the country. We had to drive about 4 hours to get there (yes we've been doing a lot of driving but it is totally worth it! I feel like I'm seeing so much of the country!). I road with Erika and her cousin and a girl named Britney from our group. We stopped along the way for a few short hikes that were only 10 to 20 minutes. We saw the chasm and a few other beautiful spots. We also stopped by a LOTR site where they filmed the final battle outside of Gondor. There were these gorgeous reflective ponds and big open grass fields that met up with the towering mountains. It was amazing!

Even though I was super tired I didn't want to sleep in the car because I want to see everything!! We arrived at the sound and getting out of the car was like walking into a painting. Giant mountains rose straight up out of crystal blue water. It was specular! Erika booked us a two hour boat ride through the fjords and out to the Tasman sea. This was not any normal tourist boat mind you! It was a pirate ship boat! Ok so maybe it wasn't a pirate ship but it had sails just like they have and a 4 level deck. I have never been on a boat like that before.

We sailed in and out of the fjord until we arrived at the open sea. So what is a fjord? Well it was the British that named the area Milford Sound but only because A they didn't know better and B the real word for this specific land formation didn't exist in English at the time. A fjord is when glaciers carve through the landscape creating deep valleys and tall mountains. The word comes from the Scandinavian part of the world since these types of land forms are more common there.

We saw beautiful breathtaking waterfalls and some more sea lions. The mountains we sailed next to towered above us, some of them more than a mile high with another 1,000 feet below the water. Because the mountains and the water create a narrow canyon the wind speed can get up to 200km per hour (about 100 mph) but thankfully they weren't that strong for us. You definitely got blown around though and we ended up spending some of the time inside just to get a break from the strong winds. I'm glad that we has such good weather because I ended up staying outside on deck for most of the trip.

On the return journey we stopped in a town for dinner and hit the road again. We didn't get home until almost 10 but it was totally worth it! We only saw a small part of the national park today. I wish we had more time to spend there!