Milford Sound & Fiordland National Park

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Day 7:

Today we got to New Zealand but didn't land. We cruised through the Fjordland, starting with Milford Sound, then Doubtful Sound, then Dusky Sound.

Milford Sound was early in the morning. We dragged all the boys out of bed at 6 am and hauled them on deck in the cold wind & rain. Despite the conditions, it was very beautiful, with fantastic waterfalls plunging down into the sea. We saw fur seals and a couple of penguins. Unfortunately, David, who is currently obsessed with penguins, missed seeing them. It was too cloudy to see the last remaining glacier that was hidden in the cloud up a hanging valley.

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The captain must have nerves of steel as the channel sometimes looked too narrow to fit through.

The weather got much better during the day, and was sunny and relatively arm when we went through the other sounds. In one we say quite a large pod of dolphins as well as more spectacular scenery.

At one point we went through the Acheron Passage, but for all the Patrick O'Brian fans, it was not the same Acheron, but a British ship that mistakenly re-named a passage that Captain Cook had already named. However since Cook had chosen the rather uninspiring name of "New Passage", we reckoned that the captain of the Acheron had the right idea.