Milford Sound~ New Zealand Day 8

Milford Sound is a fjord at the southern point of the South Island in NZ.  Scott has family that came over on a boat from Norway where fjords are present, he has always wanted to see fjords and Milford Sound did not disappoint.

We took an overnight cruise into the sound and stayed in a little 4 bunk cabin.

 It actually should be called Milford Fjords as these mountains were carved out from a glacier and then the valley filled from the sea.  A sound has mountains carved out by a river and then the valley fills with water from the sea.  Milford was carved by glaciers.

The peaks of the mountains surrounding can be as high as 3,900 ft.  There are two full time waterfalls with many little ones depending on how much rain there has been.

We were told that over 1,000 people a day visit the harbor to view the sound during the "busy" season and that there can be up to one million visitors to the sound a year. 

Again we are here at the end of the "off season" so there were only 25 people on our cruise, during the busy time the boat holds 140 passengers, the night before we left they only had 6 people on board, just the way we like it, quiet, not crowded and the crew had time to talk to you about the area.  One of our waiters has been to over 55 different countries.

Dinner was great!  We have really enjoyed the food in New Zealand, lots of vegetables and meat and potatoes, and the apples, so crisp and juicy.

Breakfast was bright and early, 7:00 am.  in order for there to be time to have some water activity.  You could choose to take the speed boat out with 15 other people and the naturalist on the boat.

OR you could choose to take out individual kayaks which is what we chose.

We were so thrilled to see some rock hopper penguins on the shore!  They were so fun to watch in their natural environment.

It was sad to have the call to come back to the ship as we really could have spent all day out there,

 we saw a lot of starfish, the water is so clear you can see a very long way down.  We did have the underwater camera with us but if we would have put it under water we would have gone into the drink, and it was COLD so just imagine some starfish clusters.

This is really our last day to do things as tomorrow we have an 8 hour drive back into Christchurch so we can catch our flight back to Singapore.  There are two more activities today but...... those will have to be in a separate blog.