Day 8 Friday, Sep. 03 -- Milford Sound

Synopsis

We made it into Te Anau at about 9am, and then rushed directly to Milford Sound to catch up with a sea-kayaking trip. We spent the afternoon on the beautiful Milford Sound in a kayak, one of the trip highlights, for sure. We ended up spending the night in Milford Sound, a bit of a risk considering a front was moving in and there was only one way out… a pass that was snowed in for several days before we arrived.

Detailed Journal

We woke up at 5:15 this morning, filled the fresh water on the camper van and tidied up a bit before hitting the road at 7am on our way to Te Anau. We grabbed a snapshot of Lake Manapouri on the way into town. We were very disappointed right off the bat when we learned that the entire portion of the Milford Track was closed. We had half-expected from information that Lynette collected that we could hike a portion of it and see the 5th largest waterfalls in the world. Unfortunately, there was a huge tree fall last summer coupled with a very high amount of snow. They aren’t even sure it will be open in October when the “full trek” is supposed to be available.

At that point, we discussed sea kayak options for the Milford Sound. Only one outfitter (Rosco’s) does this in the winter, so we quickly stepped outside and gave them a call. They have a shuttle bus that had just left Te Anau, but the person was confident that we would be able to catch them if we started up the road to Milford immediately. They had left about 15 minutes earlier and the main road into Milford was closed for clearing of an avalanche and was scheduled to open around 10am. We started the fast pace ride to Milford. We stopped twice along the way, once for a picture, and once for a huge herd of sheep that was being herded up the road. It was obvious that we were in for a beautiful day.

We approached the continental divide at around 1015 and the road was still closed. Jason went and looked for the Adventure Fiordland van (the van carrying people for today’s sea kayak with Roscoe) in the line of cars, but didn’t see them. We later saw them fly past us and take a scenic road that veered off from ours. While we were waiting in the van for the road to open, we started hearing little claws move up and down the roof of the van. We looked out the window and saw people gathering around our van with cameras. Lynette rolled down the window and asked a man what was on the roof (we wanted to make sure it was safe to climb out since they were all keeping some distance). He said, a Kea, a nasty bird and it is eating your antennae. Lynette stepped out, looked up and saw a massive bird peering over the edge at her. The Kea, we learned, is a native nuisance. It’s known for chewing anything it gets its claws on (including stems off tires and antennas). He stands about a foot tall. He was built kinda like a parrot in the way the feathers laid and his beak. Freagin’ big bird on our roof! He pranced around for a while. When he would step into the sun, you could see brilliant red/orange colors on his chest that were otherwise greenish in the shade. Eventually, he flew off. It was, coincidentally, when the road opened for traffic (1045-1100-ish). We also looked up and saw the Adventure Fiordland jump into the line WAY in front of us.

We made our way through the windy roads to Milford Lodge. Along the way we saw lots of evidence of avalanches along the route and went through a tunnel, which we later learned took 11 years to complete due to the hard granite composition of the rock. When we got to Milford Lodge, the van we were looking for was nowhere to be seen. We asked someone there and she told us we were in the right place, they just haven’t arrived yet. We climbed into the van and waited about 10 minutes when Wayne pulled up in Rosco’s van. After brief introductions, he told us to follow him as the van had unknowingly driven past the lodge without looking for us. When we pulled up to our ship-off point, everyone else was already dressed in his or her gear (there were 10 of us on the adventure with our 2 guides – Wayne and Paul, who was more affectionately called Skirts). We dressed quickly in their gear, which consisted of polys for underwear (top and bottom), the sea kayak skirt, a waterproof overcoat and a “buoyancy aid” (life jacket). We wore our own tennis shoes with the get-up. We threw our camera, a water bottle, the binoculars, and some trail mix in a dry bag they provided and we were on our way.

Once in the water, there was a discussion on safety followed by some proper techniques for paddling. We learned to stop and “raft up” for this discussion. This required us basically line the kayaks in a parallel formation and hold onto the kayak next to us. This put us in a tight group and also provided more stability than an individual kayak. We did this several times throughout the day.

After these instructional/safety moments, we were on our way. We started at the east end of the fiord (ironically, Milford Sound is actually a fiord, not a sound) and headed south along the enormous mountains that rose from the sea. We saw Sterling Falls in the distance (5km away from us once we entered the sound – needless to say we didn’t paddle to those falls). We casually paddled along the south side of the fiord taking in the magnificent scenery. The bay was surrounded by 1500+ meter mountains that jutted almost straight up out of the water. It was truly like nothing we’d ever seen before, not even in pictures.

As we made our way along the mountains, we got close enough to rub our hands on the rocks that were brought to the surface millions and millions of years ago. We paused in front of Sinbad’s Gully and watched the water cascade down into the fiord. We continued in a southerly direction. We saw a fur seal playing in the water near crawfish traps. We talked briefly with a few of the people along for the adventure. There were 3 women from England, a couple from Germany. Never found out where the other couple was from. We also started a lengthy conversation with Wayne, one of the guides. We talked about resource conservation, power usage, people and the outdoors, evolution (he recently read a book that said humans are living 1000 years beyond evolution), simplicity, Michael Moore’s films, Pearl Harbor & 9-11, Bush, and US politics. He told us that there are heated discussions in NZ about US politics whenever the election rolls around. We thought it was kind of interesting to hear what someone from NZ thought of the current state of the US. We had some awesome views from here on out of Mitre Peak – the second tallest mountain in the world to come straight out of the water.

We stopped for some “Ra-ra” juice. Wayne told us it was a powder mix they have that is essentially what we in US know as Tang. They served it to us heated for a warm-up treat. After the mini-snack time, we turned around and started heading back along the rocks. We watched a fur seal sun-bathing on the rocks next to us. At some point here, Jason “accidentally” splashed some ice cold water onto Lynette with his paddle – paybacks will come. We then cut across the sound to the other side and saw the impressive power of a tree avalanche. The trees on the mountainside basically reach a point where the roots can no longer support the huge tree (it has grown too tall). When a storm or heavy wind comes through, it is often just enough to tip the tree over and create an avalanche of trees down the mountainside and into the sound. One had happened here just a few weeks earlier. As we continued along the opposite edge, we also saw where a big rockslide had come down one of the mountainsides. We pressed on to Bowan Falls and took some pictures of this incredible waterfall. We never confirmed how tall it was. We are pretty sure he said either 2-3 times taller than Niagara Falls. From there, we headed back to our put in location. We represented the US well here with our gold medal paddling skills. We were off – and later learned that Skirts was surprised we were first-timers in the Kayak. We pulled onto the shore, helped others pull their kayaks out and got out of the kayak gear. We returned to the van to change out of the polys into our own clothes. That is when we learned how much their polys STUNK! We spoke with the guides about suggestions in lieu of Milford Track. They suggested doing the top hut portion of the Routeburn Track. Wayne suggested getting some weather information, perhaps spending the night here in the Sound and then venturing up tomorrow (a front is expected tonight). We said thank you to the guides and were off to Milford Lodge. We bought some crackers from the Lodge as our bread supply is getting low and we decided to stay over in the sound and check out the Routeburn tomorrow.

We headed over to the Visitor’s Center to talk about the Routeburn Trek. We parked in front of the Milford Café and walked to the Visitor’s Center, which turned out to be closed. We hiked back to the car for the camera and decided to hike up to an overlook of Bowan Falls that we thought would give great sunset views. We got to the trailhead and found that it was closed for safety reasons. We headed back to the cafe and got a few shots of Mitre Peak from there at sunset.

We had decided to camp without power (for the third night in a row), so we drove to a spot we thought was most out of the way. Lynette showered, then we headed to the Milford Sound Pub where Lynette had a pint of Milford Draught and Jason had a pint of DB Draught. We were hoping to catch a conversation with the locals, but that failed so we sat and sipped our beers while watching some New Zealand music TV and the first couple of minutes of a Rugby game. We headed back to the van and fixed some penne pasta and tomato sauce and wrote in the journal before hitting the sack.

Pictures

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