Milford Sound

Today was a super early start having to get the bus at 6.50 ouch! The bus journey was a good 4 hours or so to Milford and we had a nutty driver who was obsessed with time. We did have a couple of stop offs on the way there but they were all pretty unimpressive.

The whole day was a good 12 hour round trip which basically consisted of driving to Milford Sound, having a 2 hour ferry cruise and then getting back on the bus to drive back to Queenstown. When we finally got to Milford we were handed our ferry tickets and then boarded the red boat. This boat could hold 300 people but there was only our bus on it plus a few other people so it was awesome. The first point of call was the Underwater Observatory which was actaully floating so it did rock a little. Inside there were stairs that led down to the observatory which was circular and had glass windows all around so you could see all the sea life. The guy there was saying they had to alter the boyancy of the observatory as so much marine life had built up over the past however many years making it a lot heavier.

There was a lot of activity around the observatory and you could see a lot of marine life had set up home on it. This was looking out into the sea so was not like looking at captive fish in an aquarium so it was really kool. After we had spent 10 mins down there everyone went back to board the ferry again and continue our cruise around the scenic Milford Sound.

Milford Sound has the label of being the most scenic spot in all of NZ and it certainly was very nice as you will see from the pictures. On a couple of occasions we spotted a group of bottle nose dolphins that started swimming and jumping along side to ferry which was awesome, definately a highlight of the trip.

It was then back to the ferry port and on the bus for the drive back. I thought Milford was really nice but I didnt really think it was worth the trip out there to be honest seeing as there was plenty of beautiful scenery all around you in NZ which more or less looked the same.