No, that is not a Norwegian blue in the photograph above. Although there may be a parrot or two in this story.
One of the attractions of New Zealand as a destination for me was the ability to experience almost utter isolation in a gorgeous natural landscape. We knew we wouldn't find that kind of feeling in Auckland or Wellington so to maximize our chances of really getting away from it all, we spent a few days on the south island, a land mass about the size of the State of Illinois (25th largest state, in case you care), with roughly the population of Rhode Island (44th most populous; again in case you care).
One of the attractions of New Zealand as a destination for me was the ability to experience almost utter isolation in a gorgeous natural landscape. We knew we wouldn't find that kind of feeling in Auckland or Wellington so to maximize our chances of really getting away from it all, we spent a few days on the south island, a land mass about the size of the State of Illinois (25th largest state, in case you care), with roughly the population of Rhode Island (44th most populous; again in case you care).
Once on the south island, we doubled down on our bet and stayed away completely from the cities of Christchurch, Dunedin and Nelson which hold over half the island's population and headed as southwest as we could down to New Zealand's largest national park: Fiordland, a place covering almost 5,000 square miles made up of 13 Sounds which are not sounds, few roads, even fewer people, plenty of old man's beard and about zero towns. Oh...and of course three of New Zealand's 10 Great Walks (of which we did none).
Depending on your perspective and belief system, Fiordland National Park was either formed by glacial movement eroding and grinding the rock and earth over four or five millennia or so or it was dug out by the demigod Tū Te Rakiwhānoa with a kō, or digging stick. While the first one is probably more plausible, the second is a whole lot more romantic. I'm opting to believe the latter. It's much more fun that way.
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| "Keep Left" sign on the rear view mirror. Driving on the wrong side of the road again. |
We found that there is a pretty good network of transportation in New Zealand. We managed to get most places we wanted to get by plane, boat, bus, taxi, light rail and the occasional tramp for pretty cheap and on some pretty darned convenient schedules. But taking a bus or some other form of vehicle driven by someone else deep into Fiordland? Pass. Could it be done? Sure. But we just didn't have the time to spare. That meant renting a car. And driving on the left (i.e. wrong) side of the road.
Now, I'm not a complete stranger to driving on the wrong side of the road. I spent every other day over a two week period in the summer of 2007 behind the wheel of a car en route from London all the way up to Inverness and then back down to Glasgow. Why every other day? Because my friend Mike and I alternated days / designated driving and driving every day was just way to much to bear. Mike was much better than I was. I remember a lot of hitting of curbs on the sides of the roads. Getting from one place to another even down some very narrow, one lane but two way roads was OK; just those pesky curbs.
I figured if there was a spot to get back into the right side of a car and drive it, the place to pick was the south island of New Zealand. I mean, there can't possibly even be that many cars on the road, right? There's nobody there, after all. Plus, we had an automatic. In Britain all those years ago we had a manual that I had to shift with my left hand all the while watching out for those curbs. Those freaking curbs!!!!
Two good things for me here. First, I was right about the number of cars on the road. Second...no curbs. Just a rumble strip on the edge of the road and one in the center. Hear some rumbling, move back into lane. Worked perfectly. No curbs after all. That and the car constantly admonishing me with the warning "Please obey all traffic regulations" each time I exceeded the speed limit by 10 kilometers per hour kept me on the straight and narrow (and ticket free) in New Zealand.
Our first destination in our rental car was Te Anau, a town with slightly fewer than 2,000 permanent residents about mid-way down the east side of Fiordland National Park. It's about two hours easy drive from Queenstown, which is where we first set foot on the south island. As a base for exploring for a couple of days, Te Anau was a fantastic place to bunk up, especially since our hotel was right on the shore of Lake Te Anau and within an easy tramp of a walking trail along side the lake.
But we weren't there to see Te Anau. We were there to see Fiordland and at least one of its famous Sounds.
About those Sounds, which as I've already mentioned are not sounds at all. The west coast of New Zealand had some pretty famous early visitors. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to record the existence of the islands in 1642. A little more than 100 years later, Yorkshireman James Cook, perhaps the most well traveled of all famous explorers, circumvented New Zealand en route to it becoming a British territory. Cook gave the name Doubtful Cove to one part of Fiordland because he wasn't certain he could sail into the waterway and maybe less certain he could sail out.
But neither of these guys called anything a sound. That distinction belongs to John Lort Stokes, a Welshman, who gave thirteen bodies of water in Fiordland the name Sound including converting Doubtful Cove to Doubtful Sound. Turns out he was wrong about them all. According to what we were told while in Fiordland, sounds are bodies of water formed by the action of water eroding rock over a long period of time. They are also good places to anchor ships because they are calmer than the seas or oceans they feed. Turns out those sounds in Fiordland are actually fjords, which are formed by the movement of glaciers. Or maybe the handiwork of a demigod.
The kiwis are somewhat self-deprecating about the whole issue. Not only did they (and it's not really they if it's a Welshman is it?) manage to name 13 fjords as sounds by mistake but when they actually figured out their mistake and named the National Park after what the fingers of water really are, they ended up spelling fjord wrong.
Our pick of Sounds (or fjords or fiords) to visit (and take a boat ride on) came down to what I am sure are most people's top two: Milford Sound in the north end of the Park or Doubtful Sound over the mountains from where we were staying in Te Anau. Since most of the Park is inaccessible to cars, we had limited options. We didn't want to charter a boat and we weren't up for a three day or so long tramp. So, we had our pick of two: Milford or Doubtful. We chose the one that Rudyard Kipling called the eighth wonder of the world: Milford Sound. Although Kipling had nothing to do with it. Apparently it's the more impressive. Although it's also apparently the more crowded.
To combat the crowds, we figured the early bird gets the worm and we booked an early cruise, like 9:30 early. Doesn't sound to early for you? The advice we received was to leave at least 2 hours and 15 minutes for the trip to Milford Sound and get to the boat early. So, a 6:45 a.m. start in the car was in the cards for us.
Three years ago we spent the better part of a day driving along to Road to Hana on the island of Maui, a twisty, turny drive along the Pacific Ocean that tourists on vacation in Hawaii make an event out of. There are stops you can make along the way to see waterfalls, pick up some fresh-baked banana bread or just gaze at the ocean. We hated it. There's nothing at the end of it except a hardware store. Milford Road seemed to be the same sort of thing but we were all in anyway. After all, we'd seen pictures of the end here and if nothing else, we had a boat ride scheduled for about 90 minutes.
Now at 6:45 in the morning in early March, it's pitch black in New Zealand so our appreciation of the road we were driving on would have to happen about an hour or so after we set off. And whatever stops we were going to make would have to happen on the way back. After all, we had a boat to catch and we hoped we'd be at least halfway there by the time the sun came up.
Now, I'm not a complete stranger to driving on the wrong side of the road. I spent every other day over a two week period in the summer of 2007 behind the wheel of a car en route from London all the way up to Inverness and then back down to Glasgow. Why every other day? Because my friend Mike and I alternated days / designated driving and driving every day was just way to much to bear. Mike was much better than I was. I remember a lot of hitting of curbs on the sides of the roads. Getting from one place to another even down some very narrow, one lane but two way roads was OK; just those pesky curbs.
I figured if there was a spot to get back into the right side of a car and drive it, the place to pick was the south island of New Zealand. I mean, there can't possibly even be that many cars on the road, right? There's nobody there, after all. Plus, we had an automatic. In Britain all those years ago we had a manual that I had to shift with my left hand all the while watching out for those curbs. Those freaking curbs!!!!
Two good things for me here. First, I was right about the number of cars on the road. Second...no curbs. Just a rumble strip on the edge of the road and one in the center. Hear some rumbling, move back into lane. Worked perfectly. No curbs after all. That and the car constantly admonishing me with the warning "Please obey all traffic regulations" each time I exceeded the speed limit by 10 kilometers per hour kept me on the straight and narrow (and ticket free) in New Zealand.
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| Mirror Lakes, Fiordland National Park. |
But we weren't there to see Te Anau. We were there to see Fiordland and at least one of its famous Sounds.
About those Sounds, which as I've already mentioned are not sounds at all. The west coast of New Zealand had some pretty famous early visitors. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to record the existence of the islands in 1642. A little more than 100 years later, Yorkshireman James Cook, perhaps the most well traveled of all famous explorers, circumvented New Zealand en route to it becoming a British territory. Cook gave the name Doubtful Cove to one part of Fiordland because he wasn't certain he could sail into the waterway and maybe less certain he could sail out.
But neither of these guys called anything a sound. That distinction belongs to John Lort Stokes, a Welshman, who gave thirteen bodies of water in Fiordland the name Sound including converting Doubtful Cove to Doubtful Sound. Turns out he was wrong about them all. According to what we were told while in Fiordland, sounds are bodies of water formed by the action of water eroding rock over a long period of time. They are also good places to anchor ships because they are calmer than the seas or oceans they feed. Turns out those sounds in Fiordland are actually fjords, which are formed by the movement of glaciers. Or maybe the handiwork of a demigod.
The kiwis are somewhat self-deprecating about the whole issue. Not only did they (and it's not really they if it's a Welshman is it?) manage to name 13 fjords as sounds by mistake but when they actually figured out their mistake and named the National Park after what the fingers of water really are, they ended up spelling fjord wrong.
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| Lake Te Anau, with a flax plant in the foreground. Not sure the Māori could have lived without the flax plant. |
To combat the crowds, we figured the early bird gets the worm and we booked an early cruise, like 9:30 early. Doesn't sound to early for you? The advice we received was to leave at least 2 hours and 15 minutes for the trip to Milford Sound and get to the boat early. So, a 6:45 a.m. start in the car was in the cards for us.
Three years ago we spent the better part of a day driving along to Road to Hana on the island of Maui, a twisty, turny drive along the Pacific Ocean that tourists on vacation in Hawaii make an event out of. There are stops you can make along the way to see waterfalls, pick up some fresh-baked banana bread or just gaze at the ocean. We hated it. There's nothing at the end of it except a hardware store. Milford Road seemed to be the same sort of thing but we were all in anyway. After all, we'd seen pictures of the end here and if nothing else, we had a boat ride scheduled for about 90 minutes.
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| The road to Milford Sound... |
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| and the kind of landscape we were driving through. |
There is pretty much a single road taking you directly from Te Anau to Milford Sound, but at some point about 2/3 of the way through the journey it takes sort of a left turn. If there was a moment when the beauty of the landscape revealed itself to us, it was at about this point. Our environment changed from what I'll call flat grasslands to spectacular mountains with sides about as vertical as you can get. The mountainsides were a combination of forested slopes and broken rock threatening to avalanche at any second. And the road changed from a straight line to a series of curves designed to find the easiest way around and through the peaks, although at one spot it was obvious that man just got tired of finding the most convenient way through nature and just cut a tunnel through the mountain.
I've driven through mountain ranges before in my life I'm not sure I've seen this kind of landscape with slopes this sheer before. Tū Te Rakiwhānoa did a heck of a job on these things with his kō. It was only the last maybe 45 minutes of the drive that the landscape looked this way but then again, it just kept going when we got to the Sound although where there was road there now was water.
Hop on a boat at the Milford Sound terminal and you can get a closer look at those steep slopes you've been driving past on the way to your destination. There are a series of waterfalls fed by both melting glaciers (global climate change is real, folks!) and by the rainfall that hits Fiordland and drops about seven to nine meters of rain (that's about 23 to 30 feet per year) over 200 days of the year. For perspective, the most rain ever recorded in a year in Washington, D.C. is a little more than five feet. Fiordland gets a lot of rain.
The boat also gets you up close and personal with some of the tree avalanche scars along the sides of the mountains. These are spots where tree avalanches have occurred, massive collapses of trees caused by one fall near the top of the slope ripping all the plants below it out of the rock face; the roots of the trees are so shallow on these faces because there is so little purchase for the roots. It must be an astonishing sight to see when it happens. The aftermath leaves the cliff face wth a bare strip all down its height.
Other than cruising around the Sound and maybe doing some tramping, there is nothing else to do at the end of your drive. So having spent the better part of 90 minutes on our ship, the Lady Bowen, we headed back to Te Anau. With some stops along the way, hoping that we'd get more out of our day trip than we did on the road to Hana in 2016. And I won't come back to this point again. We definitely did. I mean the boat ride alone trumped the day we spent on the east side of Maui.
We elected to stop five times on our return journey. Four were pre-planned and one was so gorgeous that we had to get out of the car and take a little walk. Most companies that conduct boat trips on Milford Sound will have a brochure with a map and some suggested stopping points. And having compared a few of these, they are all pretty much the same with maybe one or two differences. If nothing else, they are enticing people to the Sound with promises of free stuff to do along the way. And they are not wrong to do this.
Our stopping points on the way home were at The Chasm, Monkey Creek, Lower Hollyford Road, Mirror Lakes and Lake Mistletoe (you'll find them all on your tour company literature). The Chasm sounded way more cool and dangerous than it was but is probably worth a stop; I'd pass on Monkey Creek and Lake Mistletoe (despite the interesting spider webs at Lake Mistletoe); and Lower Hollyford Road has a pretty cool waterfall near the road and some gorgeous scenery. But the star stop for me was Mirror Lakes, a maybe quarter mile long walkway along a river or lake (it seemed like a river but it's called Mirror Lakes so...) that reflects the mountain scenery beyond beautifully. It's supposed to be perfectly reflective but the ducks in the water kept making waves for us. Would have been nice to see this place perfectly still.
Our trip to Milford Sound also gave us one of those regrettable if I'd have known then what I know now moments. And this is where the parrots come in. I promised you parrots and i'm giving you parrots.
Right before the end of the journey along Milford Road, there's a one-way tunnel blasted right through solid rock (I know I mentioned this earlier). Because it's one-way, there's a chance you will have to wait for any traffic inside the tunnel to clear it before you can enter. As luck would have it (and I really mean this), we waited both ways.
As we were waiting on our way there at just about five minutes after eight in the morning, we spotted two birds on the ground that looked like parrots. Sure enough they were New Zealand's famous mountain parrot, the kea (pronounced key-a, not kay-a). And they seemed awfully interested in the car waiting ahead of us. So interested in fact that they hopped right onto the hood of the car and then scampered quickly up onto the roof.
Then we spotted two more. And two more. And two more. Apparently, cars waiting outside the Homer Tunnel (that's what it's called) attract keas at just after eight o'clock in the morning. These things move fast by the way. It's a combination of flying, running and hopping but they can cover some distance in a hurry. And apparently some of the latecomers, maybe jealous of the first pair being on top of a car, wanted to spend some time on our car. Right on the hood. Two parrots looking us right in the eye. And before I could even take a decent picture, they scampered up the windshield and onto the roof.
How does one get a kea off the roof of a Nissan automobile, you might ask? I have no idea. We pounded on the roof then blew the horn a bunch of times. I have no idea if that got them off or not. I just knew one thing: no way was I getting out of the car or opening the window to check. These birds apparently have the intelligence of a six year old human and have known to be mischievous. No way was I getting stuck with a parrot in our rental car.
When the sign at the right side of the tunnel said go, we went. We assumed if nothing else we had done, that would dislodge our two riders. I have no idea if it did or not. All I can tell you is when we got to the parking lot about 20 minutes later, our car was kea-free.
I cannot express how much I was looking forward to passing back through the Homer Tunnel so I could see some more kea. I also cannot express how disappointed in myself I was that there were none. We pulled off the road, got out of the car and nothing! No parrots in sight. Should have spent more time with these birds when we had them. What's that about a bird in the hand? We had time, too. We could have missed our shot at the tunnel and gone through 10 or 15 minutes later. Oh well! We still got a few minutes with them and we found some amazing scenery. Not bad for a day on the other side of the world.
I've driven through mountain ranges before in my life I'm not sure I've seen this kind of landscape with slopes this sheer before. Tū Te Rakiwhānoa did a heck of a job on these things with his kō. It was only the last maybe 45 minutes of the drive that the landscape looked this way but then again, it just kept going when we got to the Sound although where there was road there now was water.
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| Milford Sound. Finally. Flax plant in the foreground (again). |
The boat also gets you up close and personal with some of the tree avalanche scars along the sides of the mountains. These are spots where tree avalanches have occurred, massive collapses of trees caused by one fall near the top of the slope ripping all the plants below it out of the rock face; the roots of the trees are so shallow on these faces because there is so little purchase for the roots. It must be an astonishing sight to see when it happens. The aftermath leaves the cliff face wth a bare strip all down its height.
Other than cruising around the Sound and maybe doing some tramping, there is nothing else to do at the end of your drive. So having spent the better part of 90 minutes on our ship, the Lady Bowen, we headed back to Te Anau. With some stops along the way, hoping that we'd get more out of our day trip than we did on the road to Hana in 2016. And I won't come back to this point again. We definitely did. I mean the boat ride alone trumped the day we spent on the east side of Maui.
We elected to stop five times on our return journey. Four were pre-planned and one was so gorgeous that we had to get out of the car and take a little walk. Most companies that conduct boat trips on Milford Sound will have a brochure with a map and some suggested stopping points. And having compared a few of these, they are all pretty much the same with maybe one or two differences. If nothing else, they are enticing people to the Sound with promises of free stuff to do along the way. And they are not wrong to do this.
Our stopping points on the way home were at The Chasm, Monkey Creek, Lower Hollyford Road, Mirror Lakes and Lake Mistletoe (you'll find them all on your tour company literature). The Chasm sounded way more cool and dangerous than it was but is probably worth a stop; I'd pass on Monkey Creek and Lake Mistletoe (despite the interesting spider webs at Lake Mistletoe); and Lower Hollyford Road has a pretty cool waterfall near the road and some gorgeous scenery. But the star stop for me was Mirror Lakes, a maybe quarter mile long walkway along a river or lake (it seemed like a river but it's called Mirror Lakes so...) that reflects the mountain scenery beyond beautifully. It's supposed to be perfectly reflective but the ducks in the water kept making waves for us. Would have been nice to see this place perfectly still.
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| One last pic of Milford Sound. Part of a glacier is visible on the mountain in the center of the frame. |
Right before the end of the journey along Milford Road, there's a one-way tunnel blasted right through solid rock (I know I mentioned this earlier). Because it's one-way, there's a chance you will have to wait for any traffic inside the tunnel to clear it before you can enter. As luck would have it (and I really mean this), we waited both ways.
As we were waiting on our way there at just about five minutes after eight in the morning, we spotted two birds on the ground that looked like parrots. Sure enough they were New Zealand's famous mountain parrot, the kea (pronounced key-a, not kay-a). And they seemed awfully interested in the car waiting ahead of us. So interested in fact that they hopped right onto the hood of the car and then scampered quickly up onto the roof.
Then we spotted two more. And two more. And two more. Apparently, cars waiting outside the Homer Tunnel (that's what it's called) attract keas at just after eight o'clock in the morning. These things move fast by the way. It's a combination of flying, running and hopping but they can cover some distance in a hurry. And apparently some of the latecomers, maybe jealous of the first pair being on top of a car, wanted to spend some time on our car. Right on the hood. Two parrots looking us right in the eye. And before I could even take a decent picture, they scampered up the windshield and onto the roof.
How does one get a kea off the roof of a Nissan automobile, you might ask? I have no idea. We pounded on the roof then blew the horn a bunch of times. I have no idea if that got them off or not. I just knew one thing: no way was I getting out of the car or opening the window to check. These birds apparently have the intelligence of a six year old human and have known to be mischievous. No way was I getting stuck with a parrot in our rental car.
When the sign at the right side of the tunnel said go, we went. We assumed if nothing else we had done, that would dislodge our two riders. I have no idea if it did or not. All I can tell you is when we got to the parking lot about 20 minutes later, our car was kea-free.
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| The entrance to Homer Tunnel. On the way to Milford Sound. |
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| Attack of the kea! Photo courtesy of my more-alert-than-her-husband wife. |
How We Did It
The first decision we made about our time in Fiordland National Park was where to stay. We chose Te Anau because we thought it would allow us the flexibility to make decisions about what to do in the Park after we booked accommodations. I thought Te Anau was a great town. It's clearly a tourist town but it's walkable and there are a ton of dining options. While I rarely rave about hotels we have stayed in on our travels, I'd highly recommend the Fiordland Lake View Motel and Apartments. It's within walking distance of downtown, the suites are huge and the beds were comfortable. I don't know what else I could wish for.
Once we made the decision to visit Milford Sound the only choice left was which tour company to spend an hour and a half of our time on the water. We chose Southern Discoveries primarily because of their Encounter Nature Cruise which promised a longer cruise on a smaller boat with the opportunity for close up pictures of penguins, seals and dolphins. While having nothing to compare their cruise to, I was underwhelmed on the nature side of things primarily because we saw no penguins and no dolphins. As a veteran of countless nature spotting cruises and safaris and walks, I also know that the nature sometimes doesn't cooperate.
For some reason, we decided to pre-purchase lunch on our cruise. I have no idea why. Maybe I was thinking that we wouldn't be able to buy food any other way at Milford Sound. Anyway, we ended up with probably too much food and too little (or maybe no) choice. They have food available for purchase on the boat a la carte. We should have done this. We could have eaten just what we wanted and nothing else and we would have had complete control over the menu. Lesson learned.
So did the early start give us an advantage? Did the early bird really get the worm? I'm convinced it did. But then again, I usually am. First of all, our driving time was about an hour and 45 minutes, at least 30 minutes faster than most travel advice we read. Second, the parking lot was pretty full; there are parking lots further away than we parked but I'm glad we didn't have to. Finally, I didn't think the Sound was crowded with boats which is the one consistent thing we heard from everyone we talked to in New Zealand that had visited Fiordland. I'm almost always going to suggest an early start. I'm convinced this time it paid off big time.
The first decision we made about our time in Fiordland National Park was where to stay. We chose Te Anau because we thought it would allow us the flexibility to make decisions about what to do in the Park after we booked accommodations. I thought Te Anau was a great town. It's clearly a tourist town but it's walkable and there are a ton of dining options. While I rarely rave about hotels we have stayed in on our travels, I'd highly recommend the Fiordland Lake View Motel and Apartments. It's within walking distance of downtown, the suites are huge and the beds were comfortable. I don't know what else I could wish for.
Once we made the decision to visit Milford Sound the only choice left was which tour company to spend an hour and a half of our time on the water. We chose Southern Discoveries primarily because of their Encounter Nature Cruise which promised a longer cruise on a smaller boat with the opportunity for close up pictures of penguins, seals and dolphins. While having nothing to compare their cruise to, I was underwhelmed on the nature side of things primarily because we saw no penguins and no dolphins. As a veteran of countless nature spotting cruises and safaris and walks, I also know that the nature sometimes doesn't cooperate.
For some reason, we decided to pre-purchase lunch on our cruise. I have no idea why. Maybe I was thinking that we wouldn't be able to buy food any other way at Milford Sound. Anyway, we ended up with probably too much food and too little (or maybe no) choice. They have food available for purchase on the boat a la carte. We should have done this. We could have eaten just what we wanted and nothing else and we would have had complete control over the menu. Lesson learned.
So did the early start give us an advantage? Did the early bird really get the worm? I'm convinced it did. But then again, I usually am. First of all, our driving time was about an hour and 45 minutes, at least 30 minutes faster than most travel advice we read. Second, the parking lot was pretty full; there are parking lots further away than we parked but I'm glad we didn't have to. Finally, I didn't think the Sound was crowded with boats which is the one consistent thing we heard from everyone we talked to in New Zealand that had visited Fiordland. I'm almost always going to suggest an early start. I'm convinced this time it paid off big time.
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