Day 23 - Where is Roget when you need him?

Te Anau - Milford Sound and back (240 km)

There were two things I had been looking forward to on this trip, Mauna Kea and Milford Sound. The Sound is one of the most famous places in New Zealand and is always #1 on those Top Ten Things To Do list things. You know the lists, the sort used by tourists to tick off stuff to see and not experience.

Anyway, the drive from Te Anau to the Sound is 120km. Filling up at the last petrol stop, even though the road is 100kph limit all the way, every piece of advice says allow two hours for the journey. This is for two reasons - the Sound is a real mecca for tourists, professional travellers, backpackers, and so on. Even out of season, there were ten or so coaches in Te Anau filling up with people heading to Milford.

The second and most important reason is that the drive is so jaw-droppingly gorgeous that you want to stop every couple of miles to take it all in. You experience every possible bit of scenery you can think of, from mirror clear lakes to forest canopies to huge open plains. As you head further north, the mountains come into view, their snow-covered summits peeking above the clouds. I am no fan of camping, but by God I could spend a few weeks just walking through the many tracks and trails that criss-cross the landscape. It is impossible to tire of it.

We made a number of stops before the Sound, most notably just before the Homer Tunnel. As we pulled into the carpark, Caroline noticed another car with peole looking at it. Perched on top was a kea, a native NZ bird, green and about the size of a parrot. Despite being quite a rare species, keas are overpoweringly curious and this one was sat on the roof of a white Nissan. Seeing our car pull in, the kea immediately did a Starsky and Hutch style slide down the back window and bonnet and then hopped over to inspect our Toyota. Unfortunately for the kea, the taste of Mudflap au Corolla avec Jus de Rear Door wasn't to his liking.

Milford Sound isn't a town or even village, but merely the most spectacular part of an already beautiful country. 14 miles of fiord with 3,000 foot high cliffs carved by the ice adorned with waterfalls, this is Scenery on the grandest of scales. There are regular cruises up and down the fiord run by three or four companies fed by a regular stream of coaches up the Milford Road. There is also the 70km Milford Track for those who wish to experience the area by foot.

I couldn't describe Milford Sound. Just open a thesaurus and pick every superlative in the book. Scale has little meaning as the cruise takes in waterfalls almost 160 feet high, but the size of the cliffs they descend makes the fall seem like the drops from a tap. (For perspective, 160 feet is slightly less than the height of Niagara Falls - which are 167ft high). As a bonus, the boat is manouvered right underneath the spray of the falls and you get an unforgettable reminder of the power of the water. It is easy to see why people travel so far to spend two hours cruising up and down the Sound, even from Te Anau - the closest town to the Sound - it is a 240km round trip but by God it is worth it.