New Zealand Millford Sound Trip 04Jan23

Kala & I took a small group outing via bus trip Queenstown to Milford Sound, and boat ride on Milford Sound for today. It was a whacky ~7 hours round trip on bus with Do, a capable Dutch driver lady, to Milford and then ~2 hours on the smallish view-craft boat out through "the sound" to the sea and back. Actually this is a fiorland area, and Milford Sound is actually a fiord, not a sound. A sound is carved by river and a fiord is carved by glacier. It was other-worldy as to terrain and land/mtn & seas sights... but it was a long day. I am sure the pics and movies will not do it justice but imagine a deepwater port with surrounding land rising 2000 meters nearly vertical off the water ~ put this beyond the sub-tropics so as to have had "recent" glaciers and still have spectacular rain and snowfall totals netting huge waterfalls and cliffs. We had a good time but lamented our overland return to QT choice when new friends boarded a tiny plane to fly to QT in 40min (vs our 3hr drive "home").

 

It was pretty tourist laden at Millford Sound; there were plenty of bigger buses and the dock area was all bigger tour boats. On bus stops and more on the dock we were besieged by sand flies. Once out in the bay the bugs were gone and tourism feel was better but even our boat carried distractions from the geo-wonders. We were fortunate to have book the small group tour.

We saw two groups of fur seals and several very high waterfalls.

 

Out at the point of the inlet to the bay at this tide was nice splash action. Then heading back we caught up with some other boats.

We returned to Queenstown late but stopped at the tunnel for our turn to pass through this 1km alpine tunnel and encountered some kia. Kia are a parrot, the only ones living in alpine locations and with the intelligence of a 5 yr old human! One landed on our van and really wanted our lunches.

As we arrived back in Queenstown pretty late, we chose to hit the Frankton Arms again; they were open. The kitchen staff had Covid so it was closed; they got a decent pizza truck to come outside and we had "pizza Tuesday" in New Zealand ~ it was pretty good.