This is looking out the back of the boat that we took on the sound. The back deck was covered, and the wind normally only blew rain onto about half of the deck at the time, so we (and our cameras) kept moving around a bit, but stayed pretty dry.
As it turns out, all the rain was a good thing, as all the hills and mountains of Milford Sound had waterfalls that are only there right after the rains. There were thousands of places that water was cascading down. The boat in this picture was about the same size as ours, and is in front of one of only two year-round falls in the sound.
Here is Matt in his rain gear...
And Lisa in hers...
The combination of the wind and the waterfalls gave lots of intersting photo opportunities. The boats could get quite close to the sides of the sound (often within 10 or so feet) because the sides were so steep, even underwater. We saw a picture of one of the big Princess cruise ships that comes in every week or so during the summer. It holds 4000+ people and the picture made a ship like the one we are on look like a rowboat.
Moss covered nearly everything, and since there was no real soil, moss clinging to the rocks supported the roots of trees. If one tree fell up high it could take out hundreds of trees on the way down, since nothing could be rooted too solidly.
Here is Lisa, just coming in from a large soaking when they took us up close to the second permanent waterfall, but still having fun...
And both of us after our trip during a brief break in the rain. The photos don't really do the sound justice, the mountains were really quite spectacular.
The next day we set out for an ovenight trip on Doubtful Sound, which was in the same National Park, about 80 miles south of Milford Sound. It was a bit overcast, but we had two days without rain, which was a nice way to finish up our trip. To get to Doubtful Sound we took a shuttle to a boat, across a lake to another shuttle, then up and over a pass and down to the sound. Here we are at the pass looking down to the sound below.
A closer view of the sound from above. The road that we were on was built during the construction of a hydro-electric plant. Before that you could only get to the sound by hiking a couple of days or by coming in from the ocean.
And the view once we were on the water in the sound.
Both of us enjoyed the trees along the side of the sound. We had someone who used to work for the DOC (Department of Conservation) on the boat, and we probably asked what type of tree they were, but that was over a week and thousands of miles ago :->
Our boat for this cruise was pretty small, 8 passengers and 2 crew. The boat in this picture was more like 50 passengers, also an overnight cruise. Gives you a bit of idea of the scale of the sound.
We followed the sound all the way out to the ocean, and near the end of it we saw both a seal colony and 5-6 Fiordland Crested Penguins, which are pretty rare and more photogenic than the seals... (If you've been a careful reader of the blog, you'll note that these are the penguins we didn't get to see on the beach about a week before. :P )
We spent the night on the boat. After anchoring in one of the few bays that was shallow enough to put down an anchor we noticed the sandflies. They are a very small fly, just bigger than a gnat, but they bite like mosquitos. The Maori legend is that they were created when a god saw how people were just standing around looking at the beautiful scenery. A hammer blow shattered a piece of jade into millions of sandflies that would bite anything that was not moving...
The next morning the water was exceptionally calm, providing lots of fun reflection shots.
We spent part of the morning on a couple of kayaks, here is Matt showing off some "Olympic" form :-> That's our boat in the background.
And the last Lisa & Matt self-portrait of the trip (still working on group self portrait composition).
One last shot of the sound before we headed out.
On the drive out we stopped in a couple of different spots, here Lisa gets to see just how soft (and also suprisingly warm!) that moss that holds up the trees is...
And that is it for the honeymoon. We headed back to Queenstown and stayed overnight before catching our flight though Auckland to San Francisco. We had a great time, and after nearly two months on the road we were still talking to each other at the end. A special thanks to Matt's mom and dad for dog sitting and to Lisa's mom for cat sitting. We have been home for a couple of days now, and, other than our fridge deciding to die a couple of days ago, things have been pretty relaxing. Looking forward to catching up with everyone soon!
Thanks for all the nice comments on the blog, and just come visit us if you want the narrarted slideshow version. :->
Love,
Lisa & Matt
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