A very spooky place...

Mirror Lakes on route to Milford Sound
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Milford sound was a one day tour, but deserved it's own entry mainly because the place was like nothing we've seen before.  The journey up there was pretty cool, a 4 hour coach ride with a guide who stopped over at all the interesting sites enroute, including The Chasm which was impressive with the wierd rocks shapes carved out by the water.

Anyway, we arrived in Milford Sounds and it was dull and rainy, not surprising considering the area gets rainfall five days out of six due to it's geographical location.  Besides, we had been told by numerous people that it was most beautiful on a rainy and misty day, and it certainly was!

The Chasm - Rather Gaudi-esque but totally natures work
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The Sound is like a huge canal leading out to the river with mountains on either side, and waterfalls all the way along.  It was created in the last ice age when glaciers carved out the massive valleys from the mountains, and once the glaciers retreated over thousands of years, the valleys filled with sea water.  These facts alone make the place all the more amazing, and you can literally see the scrapes in the cliff edges, made my the glaciers all those many thousands of years ago.

The eerie Milford Sound
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By the time we were heading back to Queenstown, the entire coach was ready for sleep, so the driver put a rather bizarre, but funny Kiwi movie on, and we all sat back and enjoyed the ride, arriving in Queenstown after 9:30pm - a very long day, but very much worth it...