Milford Sound (day 38)

Everyone said I should visit Milford Sound, so I thought I'd better book a trip - and I'm glad I did.  It was a long day, 7am to 7:15pm, but well worth it.  For me, the drive there was actually better than the boat trip on the sound itself.

The drive starts with a trip along the east side of Lake Wakatipu.  This is the lake on which my motel is situated and is truly beautiful.  The lake is S-shaped and at 80km long, is New Zealand's longest lake, although only third largest in terms of area.  The whole of this area was heavily glaciated during five separate ice ages, with ice upwards of a kilometer deep.  Glaciation cuts out deep U-shaped valleys and, since the hardness of rock in these parts means that there has been comparatively little erosion, a lot of the mountains have near vertical sides.  This applies to the lakes too, resulting in Lake Wakatipu being over 400m deep in places.  The lake actually 'breathes', in that it has a seiche (standing wave) that has a frequency of almost 27 minutes.  The seiche is caused be differences in atmospheric pressure at each end of the lake and results in the water level rising and falling by some 20cm.

The Southland area covers the south-eastern corner of the Sount Island and includes Milford Sound, but not Queenstown.  The area has a population of 100,000 people and 8m sheep.  Actually, sheep prices have been low in recent years and dairy prices relatively high.  This has resulted in many farmers switching from sheep to dairy as well as to beef production.  Venison is also becoming increasingly popular. 

There is an interesting by-product of the venison production, which I had not heard of before.  This is the deer velvet that grows on the antlers and has long been highly regarded as a health supplement in the Orient.  It is now being widely sold as a natural remedy for a number of conditions, including arthritis.  Apparently, deer have remarkable self-healing abilities, so that if a deer breaks a leg it will completely heal itself within a month.  It is thought that something in the deer antler promotes blood circulation, which is why it is good for arthritis.  I am going to try it out, whilst I am here as, apart from knee and ankle problems, one of my fingers is becoming quite stiff and sore from arthritis.  I reckon there's nothing to lose in giving it a shot.

The Southland area has a very high level of precipitation, averaging seven to eight metres (!) per year, with a recent record of over nine metres.  On one day, they had over half a metre of rain.  It actually rains on about  250 days in the year.  We were therefore lucky to have particularly good weather for our trip to Milford Sound.

This level of rainfall means that the mountain rocks are always damp, which means that lots of mosses and lichens cover the surface.  Remarkably, this provides sufficient grip for a specially adapted form of beech tree to cling to the mountain sides and most of the hills are completely covered by the beech, right up to the tree-line.  However, from time to time the trees grow to large to hang on and they then crash down the steep mountain sides, into the lake below.  As they fall, they take evertyhing in their path.  You can see quite a few of these bare patches on the sides of the hills, but they don't remain bare for long as lots of beech seedlings spring to life.  These have been lying dormant for years, just waiting for their moment, as soon as the surface is exposed.

As well as the tree avalanches, the area also suffers from a lot of rock avalanches, as well as snow avalanches, in the winter.  What I hadn't realised is that when there is a large avalanche, it causes a very strong wind.  We saw the results of one of these 'storms', where a large group of trees had been completely uprooted by the wind.

Some of the scenery is quite surreal, which is doubtless why Stephen Spielberg chose to film a lot of Jurassic Park in this area.  Also Mount Mordaw from Lord of the Rings was filmed on the mountain on which the Remarkables ski area is set.  Incidentally, I just heard that the recenty divorced Shania Twain has a house and 10,000 acres here in Queenstown, just for her and her three horses. 

For me, the best part of the day was the drive to Milford Sound, rather than the boat trip itself.  One particularly memorable place was Mirror Lakes where the water is so smooth that you get wonderful reflections of the mountains on the surface of the lakes. We were particularly lucky with the weather on the day of our trip which meant that the lakes were very smooth and our visibility, in general, was superb.  It was a little cloudy when we got to the Sound but not enough to spoil our views.

Milford Sound is a 15km long,  deeply cut inlet on the south west coast of the South Island, running into the Tasman.  Rudyard Kipling called it the eigth wonder of the world.  Being formed by glaciation, it is actually a fjord and is situated in the aptly named Fjordland National Park, New Zealand's largest. The mountains rise steeply from the sea, reaching up to to 1,500 metres.  Many waterfalls feed into the fjord and the ship's captain loved edging the prow of the ship right up to the waterfall so that the people standing at the front were soaked.

The Sound is, of course, very spectacular, but, having just come from Hoolong Bay in Vietnam, not quite up to that standard.