Breaksea Sound, Acheron Passage and Dusky Sound in Fiordland

We sailed on to the last part of Fiordland National Park that we were to see today.  We have now sailed into mostly cloudy and overcast skies, which lent an otherworldly feel to the watery landscape.

As we entered Breaksea Sound, we passed by these craggy rocks that seem to have fallen from the fiord.  Given the grey day we had right now, it really made me feel like our entry here was not welcome.

But, again, we came to yet another waterfall, and the colors here lightened the day for a brief time.  I refer to each of these as “a” waterfall, but you can see there are really many smaller falls that makes up this waterfall.  And, this waterfall only seems to start at about 2/3 of the way down the side of the fiord.  We think the flow thru the upper part of the fiord is underground, and the waterfalls just seem to spout out from somewhere lower down.

When we were cruising thru the Acheron Passage, we passed this sound called Wet Jacket Arm.  I admit, it did seem like sailing down the arm would result in wet jackets, but I’m not certain that’s where its name comes from!  I love the way the mist is rolling down the slopes of the fiord, don’t you?

We actually saw some flowers in this part of the fiords, growing very low on the slope, close to the water.  There were some growing close to another beautiful waterfall.  Can you see the little white flowers in the lower right of the image? They are at the level of where the waterfall meets the sea.

Sometimes, these other arms or sounds just seem to beckon us to enter.  I have no idea how far down some of these go, and if they connect to something that would lead us out again to the sea.  This is an incredible place, and totally unable to be accessed by land – you must be in a boat or ship.

And, so we come to the end of our travels thru this magnificent place.  As we sailed up and down these arms, sounds and the shoreline of the national park, I found myself at times feeling sorry for those who are atheists.  I’m not an overly religious person, but I just felt God’s creativity at work here, felt the magic of belief in what He has done here.  And, I wonder if atheists can feel it to the same degree, since they don’t have the magic of belief. 

Enjoy!

Fiordland National Park – Thomson and Doubtful Sounds

Fiordland National Park is simply huge!  It’s unbelievable how large this place is, and you really can’t even begin to understand its size without looking at a map.  Jeff used Google Maps as we cruised thru this magnificent place on this day.  

We really lucked out in terms of our stateroom location on the port (left) side of the ship.  We were able to have our own private view station on our balcony as we sailed from Milford Sound to the next area we’d be exploring, Thomson and Doubtful Sounds.  Again, I just marveled at the size of the fiords, and then found them dwarfed by the mountains behind them!

One of the small sounds that we sailed by, but didn’t explore was Nancy Sound.  Jeff and I got a kick out of a part of this huge piece of New Zealand cost having a part named after his sister, Nancy!  Ok, not really, but it makes for a good story!

You’ll notice that the weather appears to keep changing throughout this day.  First, blue skies, then grey and now blue are breaking thru again.  It’s not the weather that’s changing – we’re just sailing thru different weather fronts!  At this point, we’re in Thomson Sound.  This portion of the day consisted of sailing into one sound, and then around some island fiords until we reached another sound and sailed thru it and out into the open ocean again.

When we were sailing thru Doubtful Sound, this was one of our views, and notice how the cloud cover increased again.  I thought this view was truly mysterious.  What lay ahead, if one traveled down this part of the national park fiord maze?  Stay tuned for Part III of this part of our adventure!

Enjoy!

Milford Sound – Welcome to New Zealand

Our first “excursion” in New Zealand is one where we didn’t even have to leave the ship.  We cruised Fiordland National Park, in New Zealand.  And, the first section that we visited was Milford Sound.

Rudyard Kipling, the great writer & poet, referred to the Milford Sound as the 8^th Wonder of the World.  We were lucky on this early morning (6:15 am – 8:15 am), as the weather cooperated with us.  We’d heard from staff and other cruisers that there have been times when it rained or the winds were too high, and the seas just a bit too wavy, to enter the sound.  It was rather dark when we entered the sound, but the daylight soon revealed one of many waterfalls that we would see today.  

One of the things that almost overwhelms you is the size of the fiord.  The walls just keep reaching up and up, so that something that seems rather normal sized (like the previous waterfall) is actually very large, seem almost dwarfed by the fiord walls.  If you look at the lower right corner of this image, you can just barely see a 3-mast boat in the water.  If that’s how small a decent sized boat looks, we are less than specks on a camera lens!

I did manage to zoom in on the half-moon that was in the skies (and very tiny in the previous image – on the left).  The moon and the snow-capped mountains that make up the fiords helped to create the crisp, cold air the filled our lungs.

The skies look rather grey in this shot, but I think it was just the angle from which I shot this image.  Again, there’s a decent sized boat in the lower right portion of this image – looks really tiny – like a Matchbox boat, except, of course, they never made those!

Here’s a close up of just one of the hundreds of waterfalls we saw today.  I will do my best to limit the number of waterfall images I show you, and only share the very best, or we could be looking at waterfall images for weeks!

After a couple of hours we exited Milford Sound, but we still had a lot of Fiordland National Park to see.  Part II of this wonderful treasure is coming up!

Enjoy!