Today we spend the whole day sailing in and out of the Sounds and Fjords of the New Zealand Fjordland National Park. It’s stunning up through here, very much like the inside passage in Alaska, just with more green!
The day dawns a little cloudy, but at least there is no rain, and there are spots of sunshine here and there. We navigate through Dusky Sound first, right around breakfast time. We hang out on our balcony taking pictures for a while, it is beautiful and peaceful…and a little chilly! Yay, I can actually get use out of my jeans – probably the last time I’ll have them on until we fly home in March! After a while, we head downstairs to the lounge for some cappuccino and watch the peaks and cliffs of Dusky sound slide past our aft as we sail back out into the Tasman.
We enter Doubtful Sound around 10:30, it is here where Captain Cook explored and because the entry channel is so narrow, was “doubtful” he could get his ships in and out of the sound – thus the name. The sun is out in force now, along with puffy clouds that make the perfect backdrop for these enormous peaks and steep rocky precipices. To get the full 360 degree view, we head up to the Lawn Club, and claim a space by the railing.
This Sound is more dramatic than Dusky, probably because it is a bit narrower with more little islands and islets around. I love the views off the aft of the ship – where you can see the way we’ve had to twist and turn to make our way through. You can almost feel the mountains closing in on you. As we progress along through the Sound, we’re so close to the sides of the rocks, it’s a little creepy (a la Costa Concordia), but we’re going slow enough and it’s daylight…we’ll be fine!
We’re back out into the Tasman around lunchtime. Nothing more to see until we hit Milford Sound (which is really not a Sound, but a bay, because you can’t sail through it) around 3:30. We go to the Sydney port presentation presented by Brian (an Aussie who has traveled extensively and gives us his recommendations on things to do – mostly on your own, he’s not the tour presentation which is really nice). Then we go to the Fire and Ice presentation by Milos, our naturalist. This guy is as good as any stand up comedian we have ever seen. I mean, come on, I’m going to naturalist presentations! That says something! While he is totally informative, he is also hysterically funny, so while you are sitting there learning about how the volcanoes formed and the shelves are shifting, you are also cracking up over some inane joke he’s made, or some wise crack he makes about an audience member. Just a hoot!
3:30 – we are in Milford Sound. The clouds are back, but that kind of makes the passage even more mysterious and fjord-like. The peaks here are definitely the highest we’ve seen, and some are capped with snow, while on others you can see the snow packs (or glaciers) in the little valleys way up high near the summit. It’s so quiet, so peaceful and natural – we pass the highest peak (can’t remember the name) and the peaks that look like a lion and an elephant (too many clouds to really get the effect) and tons of beautiful waterfalls all the while snapping away on our balcony.
We stop long enough to pick up passengers who took an overnight excursion from Dunedin –and then we are off, back up the Sound and out into the Tasman on our way to Sydney. Great way to spend a beautiful day at sea!
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