Before embarking on a month long journey to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji in the summer for 2016 (June-July) via the Collette tour company, I expected to be captivated by the Great Barrier Reef, which I was. However, I naively did not expect that I would absolutely fall in love with the south island of New Zealand, which is why I am choosing to start blogging about New Zealand first. Everywhere I went in New Zealand was magical, but in this particular post, I want to focus on Milford Sound.
Milford Sound isn’t actually a sound, oddly enough, it’s technically a fjord. Fjords being depressions formed near the sea, by glaciers, oh how I’ve grown to love glaciers and their beauty! — whereas sounds are formed by liquid water. Located on the southern island, Milford Sound is surrounded by magnificent looming cliffs.
Prone to motion sickness, I did take some Dramamine before the boat ride and ended up having no issues, though the waves did get a bit choppy when we came closer to open sea. I initially was a little bummed because it had been raining, which, duh, make sense because New Zealand is a temperate rain forest; however, do not be discouraged if it rains before/during one of your tours to Milford Sound, there will be even more waterfalls than usual!
As for wildlife, we did see some seals basking on some boulders, how they managed to shimmy up there, I haven’t the faintest idea… but what literally made me teary, was that we saw wild dolphins. I totally did not expect this. Being the water nymph/fairy that I am… I just wanted to jump in!! It was hard to get a good image because of the rocking boat… which was extreme (extremely fun!) at times, but you can make out here a mother and her baby!
Please excuse the squealing in this video, everyone was losing their minds, myself included.
The sound just looked completely unreal. I have seen mountains before in many different parts of the world, beautiful seascapes, etc… but nothing has compared to this. It looked like it was straight out of a fairytale.
If you are at all interested in travel… do put New Zealand on your “must go” list… anywhere in the South Island… I have no doubt that you will never be disappointed… and as my pictures are lovely, I do not think they do New Zealand justice.
Eternal Ocean of Words 