Mighty Milford

Rudyard Kipling described Milford Sound as the eighth wonder of the world and it is easy to see

why.  Technically it is not a Sound, where the sea floods into river valleys, but a fjord that was created by glacial erosion.  Vertical cliff faces, carved out by the glaciers, tower 500 metres above as you sail along the fjord's narrow waters out to the Tasman sea.  From the sea the entrance is almost

invisible, explaining why Captain Cook mis-charted the area in the 1770's as a bay, and it was not until 1840 that the Sound was properly discovered.  The dominant features of the Sound are Mitre Peak, a 1,692 metre pinnacle of rock, and Lady Bowen Falls. It rains for more than 220 days a year at Milford Sound, and today was no exception.  Sadly, therefore, the photographs do not do it justice, although the spectacle was no less dramatic, and the waterfalls were sensational.