#newzealand #travel #adventure #doubtful Sound #milford Sound
I think I’ve found the most beautiful place on the planet. I could just leave it there and post the pictures, you’d soon get the idea, but instead I’m going to try and explain to you just how wonderful this place is. I may run out of superlatives (and clichés :Bloke) .
But before I go any further, I should tell you that when we visited New Zealand briefly last year to introduce bloke to the family, we had an all too brief trip to the South Island and as a Christmas present to each other, we booked a heli-hike on the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. The weather was appalling while we were there and the flight never went ahead. We tried to do it again this trip when we passed through a few weeks back, but once again the weather stopped play. That is the nature of things over here, the weather really does play a large part in the activities and often trips or events get cancelled at the last minute and the West coast seems to get the brunt of it (apparently it’s all to do with the antarctic being 1600miles away across the open ocean and the wet air hitting the mountains. I read that Milford Sound gets only 100 dry days a year and over 7m of rainfall. Yes METERS!! At home typical values are 60cm per year! And the British are known for complaining about the weather 😂. The east side of NZ is much dryer, but it’s all relative :bloke). Long story short, we never asked for a refund so we still held credit with the flight company.
So with this in mind, we swung in to the last town before Milford Sound, called Te Anau, back on the west coast again. I thought it would be a good idea to see if we could get ourselves some activities organised. They have information centres in most large towns called Isites, here you can research and book all sorts of things to do. Milford Sound has been very high on my list of places to visit for several years now and I really wanted to kayak there. For me, this is in many ways the pinnacle of this trip. So first stop was to find and book a kayak trip we liked the sound of, there are many companies offering very similar trips, we found a company that were doing a longer than average trip, offering us 4 hours on the water, perfect.
Now, one of my customers from work in the UK, Jeff (hi Jeff!), told me that I should make the effort to visit the much more remote Doubtful Sound. I’ve followed his travel tips before and they are always sound…excuse the pun. We looked at doing it by boat, but it would take 7hrs, two boats and a coach. I knew there was a possibility bloke and I would get bored (I guarantee it :bloke), so I disappeared in to one of the helicopter companies and after a bit of sweet talking and record checking, we had ourselves booked on a flight for the following morning from Te Anau. Would the mauri weather god be kind to us?
The next morning the sun was shining and the clouds looked as if they might just hold off for a while. We had fingers and toes crossed and it turned out luck was on our side. Third time lucky! 
Our pilot Rod, introduced himself and soon enough we were in the air, only to be told that the weather conditions weren’t great, the rain was coming in fast and we were given the choice to turn around and get our money back or carry on and risk it. Rod had over 30 years flying experience, in 23 countries, and apparently loved these weather conditions, so we risked it. And my God were we pleased we did. It was the most amazing flight imaginable, 2 hrs flying time, covering not only Doubtful Sound but Dusky Sound too. We had to divert from the usual route a couple of times because of the weather conditions (low cloud prevented Rod seeing through some passes and you can’t “fly on instruments” when the bird is too small to have those kind of “instruments” 😂 :bloke). Rod radioed back to say that a few of the passes were closed and that all flights were cancelled for the remainder of the day. We were so very lucky. Although the weather got worse, Rod told us that he enjoys flying when it’s like this and we were getting to see the area at its best and as it is most of the time.
We had two planned landings included in the flight package (3 if you include getting home safely :bloke) and the first one took us through what seemed like an implausible gap in the mountains to the most incredible waterfall, known locally as Campbells Kingdom.
Yes, we flew through that gap!
The second landing was a different one to the usual planned stop apparently, again due to the weather. It was a very secluded spot and in my opinion, even more beautiful than the last stop, quite magical. It really was only missing the dinosaurs. We didn’t stay long at either place, as the rain was really quite heavy but we had long enough to take a few pics and marvel at the scenery and Rods piloting skills (he landed the helo inch perfect – with greater accuracy than I can park a car! :Bloke) . He appeared to be having a blast and kept us going with tales of the area and his previous work as a full time pilot, he now just does this for fun, helping out during the peak periods.
The last bit of the flight back in to Te Anau, the weather really closed in and the result was the most dark and moody landscape, so beautiful and atmospheric. We were quite blown away by the whole experience and we had a quiet drive to Milford Sound, contemplating what had just happened.
Two hours later we arrived in Milford, having driven along some of the most picturesque scenery ever, the mountains were really starting to dwarf us now. We stopped just after the tunnel, to let the traffic behind us pass, we were greeted with the cheekiest Kia, marching around the parking bay like he owned the place, trying to get in people’s cars (apparently the juvenile birds sometimes turn up in gangs and act like troublesome youth from the world over, being generally mischievous pinching food and car parts! :bloke) .
Arriving in Milford, it became apparent that apart from the Isite and a tiny petrol station, there was nothing else there apart from the ferry terminal and the airport (apparently the third busiest airport in NZ, amazing considering how small it is and how remote this area is). Thank goodness we booked ahead, the one campsite, Milford Lodge, was full to the brim, and so very cool. Extremely pretty, with excellent facilities, hands down the best yet. You really felt like you were in the rainforest, each vehicle had its own little bay, surrounded by mountains, with the sounds of the rainforest for company.
8 o’clock the next morning we were down at the waterfront meeting the kayak team and before long we were kitted up and on the water. Thank God, because the sand flies were horrendous. I was expecting to be blown away by Milford Sound but what I didn’t expect was how emotional it would be. This place is beyond amazing, it is quite simply stunning. It’s vast, the mountains are enormous (mitre peak, the most famous piece of scenery from Milford Sound, is a sheer face going up a vertical mile out of the water! :Bloke), the views are spectacular, you realise very quickly how very small you are in this powerful place. It’s busy too, the light aircraft and helicopters whizz over head continuously and the nature cruise ships are busy ferrying people up and down the sound. Despite all that, the place still feels remote and quite empty. Our Kiwi guide Jeff, (not Jeff from work) pointed to a waterfall in the distance and asked us how far away we thought we were from it. It looked a reasonable size so we thought not too far, it turned out to be 7km. Being a bit of a self confessed film buff, Jeff also told us of areas of the Sounds that had been used in films over the years, such as the latest Mission Impossible film, Wolverine Origins and of course, Lord of the Rings. We got up got close to a beautiful waterfall, 3 times the height of Niagra Falls, we saw Sea lions, Dolphins, birdlife, we stopped for lunch at a little pebble bay and we kayaked up narrow river sections that lead into the main basin and can only be reached at high tide. We had an amazing morning.
This was taken as soon as we got in the water, by the small harbour. 
An other group enjoying the waterfall that’s three times the height of Niagra Falls, bloke and I paddled right up to the base of it.
The local wildlife just chillin on the rocks.
Paddling up the river.
After the kayaking we had a quick change and hopped on to one of the nature cruises and enjoyed two more hours of sight seeing, travelling all the way through the sound and out in to the Tasman Sea. On the way back, we enjoyed the highlight of the cruise, being taken right underneath the waterfall that Wolverine threw himself over in the film Wolverine: Origins (apparently CGI’d, I don’t think Hugh Jackman would have survived the jump), it was incredible, an almost indescribable moment. There you are standing on the front deck of the boat and you think they might take you up close to it, but no, they stick the front of the boat right under it. We all got soaked, it was fantastic.
After that, we were dropped off at the underwater observatory for an hour to check out the marine life, before being ushered back on to a catamaran and delivered safely back to land.
These were taken from the back of the catamaran, in the late afternoon sunshine. The second photo shows a light aircraft at approximately 1000 metres, the same height as Snowdon, with Mitre Peak in the shade on the right hand side, with one of the ferries in the foreground.
The guy at the observatory told us that when it rains heavily, there are up to 800 more waterfalls active than there were that day. (If you put your hand in the sea and taste the water it is freshwater! It rains so much here that the dense seawater has up to two meters of fresh water floating on top! :Bloke) We had been very fortunate with the weather and had one of the few days of sunshine they get here, but it poured down later that evening and waterfalls sprung out from the clouds to fall down the cliff opposite the campsite.
They weren’t there in the morning.
The following day it rained heavily again and the amount of water coming off the rock was staggering. We had a bit of heavy cloud and very light rain in the morning so we decided to go and do one of the local walks and aimed to get back down before the heavy rain kicked in. The girl on the campsite reception said it would take us 5 hours, there and back. On all the previous walks we’ve done up until now, we have smashed the advised times, so we thought we would be ok. This turned out to be more of a scramble than a walk, with only orange markers to follow, there was barely a path for much of it (I lost count of the stream crossings, NB deep water, no bridges, occasional logs to walk across :bloke). 
There’s an orange marker in there, can you see it?
If you look to right, just above blokes head, you’ll see the little orange trail marker. 
This was the only fleeting glimpse we got of the outside world for the entire walk
Again, note the trail marker in the tree on the lefthand corner
2hrs and 15 Mins in to the walk, we met a guy coming down who told us we were just over half way, but still had at least a third to go to reach the end. With a storm approaching and much reluctance, 20mins later we had to admit defeat (the better part of valour. Live to fight another day, And all that. :Bloke) and turn around, in that 20mins we had barely covered much ground, it had become even more tricky underfoot and had already started raining. An hour or so later, two of the four guys that had overtaken us on the way up near the start, appeared, they looked knackered, the other two had decided to go back via the river to see if that was easier. That made me feel slightly better, these guys were half my age and looked pretty fit, and I had expected them to come trotting back down with ease about two hours earlier. We worked out that there can only have been the seven of us on that trail that day, and they advise people not to attempt it in the rain, as it rains over 200 days a year, that trail can’t get that much footfall, no wonder the trail is barely visible, you couldn’t see anything outside of the trail for the rainforest. We were really disappointed to have not made it as apparently you eventually pop out at the top by a Glacier and the views are stunning. If we ever go back again, we’ll be sure to give ourselves more time and give it another go. Unfinished business….
Despite not seeing the Glacier, we spent three nights and two full days in the most stunning landscape I have ever experienced. It truly was emotional.
Adventures of a middle aged mountain biker 