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a day trip to Milford Sound
On Boxing Day we drove to Milford Sound from Te Anau where we were staying. It's a two hour drive, and in the first hour, the road runs in the Eglington River valley. We were only a little way out of Te Anau when we got a hint of what would be a huge pleasure of the day. In the first photo you can see some purple in the middle of the field. That's a patch of lupin flowers growing alongside the river.
All along the Eglington River there were swaths of lupins. We kept stopping to take photos because each place seemed prettier than the last. Here are some of the views we saw.
Somewhere near the end of the Eglington River valley, we came across the sign in the next photo. In case you're wondering, some of the places in the Northern Hemisphere at 45 degrees north are Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis; Montreal; Bordeaux, France; Torino, Italy; the Crimea in the Ukraine; and the northern tip of Japan. In the Southen Hemisphere, the only other place where there's land at 45 degrees south besides New Zealand is South America. 45 degrees south in Argentina would be in the middle of Patagonia. Since Dunedin is close to 45 degrees south, these facts have great interest to us.
After we left the Eglington valley, we climbed over several ridges into other river systems. Below is another river.
As we passed the halfway mark to Milford Sound, it started to rain. This was actually a blessing because it activated so many waterfalls. As I've written in earlier posts, the mountains are so young and have so little soil, having been scraped clean in the ice age, vegetation grows on them very lightly. When it rains, there is almost nothing to absorb the water, so it cascades down the rocky hillsides. In the first photo, you can see the entrance to a tunnel on the road, which gives a sense of the scale of the hills.
When we got to Milford Sound, we didn't take a boat out into it. Dave had already done that last year, and after being on a boat in Doubtful Sound last month, I had had enough boats for a while. I think we made a good decision, because it was really windy and rainy when we were there. 
If you'd like to see more pictures of Milford Sound, go back to our posts from December 2007. Dave's pictures of Milford Sound are in the post "Queenstown and Milford Sound" and more photos of Milford Sound in the post "Mike's trip around the South Island."
All along the Eglington River there were swaths of lupins. We kept stopping to take photos because each place seemed prettier than the last. Here are some of the views we saw. 
Somewhere near the end of the Eglington River valley, we came across the sign in the next photo. In case you're wondering, some of the places in the Northern Hemisphere at 45 degrees north are Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis; Montreal; Bordeaux, France; Torino, Italy; the Crimea in the Ukraine; and the northern tip of Japan. In the Southen Hemisphere, the only other place where there's land at 45 degrees south besides New Zealand is South America. 45 degrees south in Argentina would be in the middle of Patagonia. Since Dunedin is close to 45 degrees south, these facts have great interest to us. 
After we left the Eglington valley, we climbed over several ridges into other river systems. Below is another river.
As we passed the halfway mark to Milford Sound, it started to rain. This was actually a blessing because it activated so many waterfalls. As I've written in earlier posts, the mountains are so young and have so little soil, having been scraped clean in the ice age, vegetation grows on them very lightly. When it rains, there is almost nothing to absorb the water, so it cascades down the rocky hillsides. In the first photo, you can see the entrance to a tunnel on the road, which gives a sense of the scale of the hills.
When we got to Milford Sound, we didn't take a boat out into it. Dave had already done that last year, and after being on a boat in Doubtful Sound last month, I had had enough boats for a while. I think we made a good decision, because it was really windy and rainy when we were there. 
If you'd like to see more pictures of Milford Sound, go back to our posts from December 2007. Dave's pictures of Milford Sound are in the post "Queenstown and Milford Sound" and more photos of Milford Sound in the post "Mike's trip around the South Island."
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