Day 19: Milford sound

20 november

Get up around 09:00. Had some relaxing breakfast outside: cold meat from the barbeque and a sandwich. Leave around 10:00 for the bus to Milford. Along the way to the sound (actually it is a fjord but who cares) we made a few stops.

Mirror lake: very clear water that was standing so still it acted like a mirror for the mountains behind it. The New Zealanders had a nice joke: they put the sign 'Mirror lake' in the lake, with the text mirrored. You could read the name in the water.
Rest break at a not very interesting spot.
The Chasm: a small river that was carving out a canyon in the rock.

Next stop was our final destination: the Milford sound (which isn't a sound, but a fjord). The weather was perfect: not a cloud in the sky. So the whole boatcruise had only 1 minor problem: the scale of things. Only if you saw a boat or airplane near the rock you got a sense of the scale. It was huge. We also spotted some seals and even a penguin, although the penguin was hidden pretty well under the trees.

It was a beautiful day, but it was very 'mainstream tourism'.