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[morgueatlarge] Milford Sound
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morgue
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Jan 15, 2007 17:27 PST
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Writing this from Invercargill. There are more general stories to
tell but they'll have to wait for a round-up email at the end of the
trip. For now I want to write about the absolute highlight of every
journey I've ever made in New Zealand - visiting Milford Sound.
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Milford Sound has a reputation. Every tourist office in the south
island will try and sell you a bus trip there. The Lord of the Rings
guys raved about it internationally. The Milford Track, which walks
through to the Sound, is known as one of the most beautiful walking
tracks in the world.
It lives up to the expectations.
We drove out of Queenstown, through Te Anau, and then started on the
Milford Road. It was a long drive through a pleasant river valley,
with the giant mountains of the Fiordland National Park looming to the
west, getting closer and closer. As we ascended into the mountains,
the foliage thinned out and changed in colour, and the views became
shorter and more dramatic. Finally we reached the highest point in
the road, a small gravel carpark in alpine region with snow just a
short distance away. Here, a tunnel had been driven through the
mountain to allow access; it was wide enough for one-way traffic only,
so the lights switched from red to green only every fifteen minutes.
We paused before entering the tunnel and I had my first highlight -
seeing keas in the wild. I've always had a great affection for the
kea, which is in many ways New Zealand's favourite bird - it always
gets the unequivocal love that the rather timid kiwi can't quite
muster. The kea is a parrot, large and green with bright orange/red
underwing, and it's very smart and very curious, and quite fearless.
I'd always wanted to see one on the loose, and this was the first
time. The keas, a posse of six or seven, hung around the cars outside
the tunnel entrance and checked out the visitors, hoped for food, and
entertained themselves as they saw fit. They seemed to enjoy hopping
on to cars and gnawing away at the lining of the windows, the
windscreen wipers, the roof-rack, anything they could hook heir beak
into. They watched everything with an air of amusement.
We went through the tunnel and came out into the upper reaches of the
Milford valley. For a while it was hard to breathe. The road took a
steep descent past sheer walls of cliff hundreds of metres high, water
streams running down the face like so many veins of silver. The
steepness of the walls on either side was hard to comprehend, and the
scale of them, so high it was hard to comprehend the distances
involved.
At the bottom, the road goes through a narrow bush-covered shoreline
and eventually ends in a rocky cove, looking out into the Milford
Sound proper - epic cliffs pushing up from gently-rolling tidal water,
wreathed in mist and fog, with countless large and small waterfalls
crashing down. One fall, easily a hundred metres high and probably
two, would by itself be a major attraction - people would come to see
and photograph it, and stand contemplating its beauty for long
minutes. In the context of the Sound, however, it was hard to even
look at the fall for too long - there was too much else dragging your
attention away.
That night, Aaron and I were camping outside the small hostel one
kilometre from the roadend. We sat outside in the minutes before the
generator was switched off at 11, and listened to the cries of keas as
we talked. Then we were surprised as a kea popped out from under a
van, inches from our feet, and peered at us expectantly. I pulled my
feet away, not wanting it to dig its beak into my boots, and it cocked
its head and tried to woo some food from us. Eventually it ran away.
Keas have a distinctive style of running, not the vacuous solemnity of
a pigeon or the brash aggressive charge of a seagull; more like the
off-balance determination of a highly intelligent toddler eager to
examine a new toy. I loved the keas. They are, I think, impossible
not to love.
The next morning, we took a cruise out into the sound, and the mist
had cleared giving clear views to the top of impressive peaks and the
full length of countless large and small waterfalls. The whole
environment seemed newborn; I've often thought that the distinctive
character of New Zealand's landscape is due to its youth, but this
environment pushed that to an extreme, as if it had just pushed up out
of the sea that morning and the ocean was still running off. It was
incredible, and after ninety minutes (as I said quite truthfully to
Aaron) my head began to hurt from how much there was to see.
So - Milford Sound. It may be the most beautiful environment I've
ever seen, beating the handsome jungles of southern Mexico and the
stunning desert landscapes of southern Jordan. It was incredible. If
you're a Kiwi and you've never been, start making plans. You won't
regret it.
Right - now, some coffee is needed, and then Aaron and I can figure
out where we're going to camp tonight... good to hear from people in
response to the last email, will get around to individual responses
when I get home...
Peace and love
morgue
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