Ginger Without Borders

After our experience with the weather in Franz Joseph, we were closely watching the weather reports for Milford Sound for days. The rain falling heavily on our way to Te Anau weighed on our spirits. But the morning of our tour, the sky was clear and only a few clouds were in the sky above Te Anau even though the weather report had called for a 50% chance of rain that day.

Milford Sound is in actually not a sound. It is a fiord (as are all the “sounds” in the southwest of NZ). A sound is created when a river valley is flooded with sea water. A fiord is created when a glacier hollows out a valley. Once the glacier retreats, its terminal moraine blocks the sea currents (like a sand bar) and creates a bay of smooth water along the glacier’s valley. Milford’s entrance is somewhat V shaped, so that even the famous Captain Cook sailed by it twice without entering. He judged it an unsafe bay for anchor since the entrance was almost hidden. The Sound was only discovered in 1812 when a whaler needed refuge from a storm and took a chance on the entrance.

The whaler named the Sound he discovered after a long marrow inlet on the Welsh coast, Milford Haven. Almost immediately after its discovery by Europeans (the Maori had been visiting for centuries to collect a special stone), it became a tourist destination. Ruyard Kipling visited and declared it “the eight wonder of the world. ” But visitors were few because the only way to get there was by sea or by a walking treck over the alps. To get more folks to the Sound, NZ began a depression-era project to cut a tunnel 3/4 of a mile through the alps. Work was interrrupted by World War II and finally finished in 1954. The tunnel was named the Homer Tunnel. The rock is so hard that rather than expand the tunnel in the age of the giant tour bus, NZ elected to alternate the 8 minute transit though the tunnel with electric signals.

But again, I have gotten a little ahead of the story because the two hour drive to Milford Sound is an amazing journey itself. Our tour bus had beautiful blue skies as we headed toward the alps through sheep country.

We soon entered the Fiordland National Park, by far the largest park in NZ since it includes most of the southwest coast of the country. Nearly 30% of NZ is in public ownership. Our first stop was in the Eglington Valley. It is one of the few valleys in Fiordland that is accessible by road. NZ has cleared a lot of the predators and reintroduced the native bat and the kakapo, a flightless parrot, which feeds on these grassy fields.

At the end of the valley is a series of lakes formed when the river moved to the far side of the valley and abandoned some of its curves, now called the Mirror Lakes, home to lots of birds.

Then we began the ascent into the Southern Alps. There were steep cliffs on all sides and pictures in all directions. We were now in the clouds and rain driven waterfalls were every few kilometers, feeding a raging river.

We got over this pass and then stopped at a flater area known as Monkey Creek, where we were visited by the extremely rare kea, the world’s only alpine parrot. They are quite large birds who like to steal anything a human makes available. They love to eat the rubber of doors and windows – our tour bus had a few scars.

We soon entered the Gertrude Valley where the road builders has to decide whether the road would go right or left. They chose left.

And the light was against us, so we waited at the Homer Tunnel.

The driver told us at the beginning of the tour that the weather in Te Anau was no indication of the weather in Milford Sound. Only when we got through the Homer Tunnel would we be able to determine the weather. So everyone was watching to see our fate as we left the tunnel. There was still blue sky but a lot more clouds. And there was one more stop before we got to the Sound.

It is called the Chasm and it is where the river has cut a channel though the rock of the mountain and left sculptured rocks. The National Park built a footbridge over the Chasm and, as you can imagine, there were lots of photographers on that footbridge.

After the Chasm, it was twenty mintues to Milford Sound. But that story is the next blog.

PS., Lena this was all pre-paid and well worth part of your inheritance. Mom got to see a kea, so she is happy and asleep again, so I am safe.