We booked Jucy Milford Sound Cruise from groupon
which is a one day trip including all transport but not lunch.

Milford Sound is a geographical phenomena caused by glacier.
After a long long time, the higher river bank become grass field while the lower river bank covered by sea.
One of the speciality is a mountain strike up to 1500m from sea level.
There are also a lot 100+m height waterfalls.

The cruise tour will bring you along the 12km mountain sea,
Cruise you in front of the waterfall,
Take a chance to watch seal, penguin, dolphin or whale.
Some of the cruise will stay overnight at the middle of sea.

Another speciality over here is the weather. 200+ day out of a year in cloudy or raining.

There is another place call doubtful sound which share the same speciality with Milford sound, but it’s more nature.
In order to keep its original state, whoever want to visit must follow a cruise tour, then change to land transport then finally take a cruise again.
It’s impossible to reach there by driving ourself.

Around 9am, we departed from Queenstown.
The driver actively share the interesting point along the 4 hour journey:

Knot Flat, a grass field surrounded by the mountain, an image normally found on the postcard.

Mirror Lake, if compared to Lake Matheson, Lake Matheson is better.

The Driver suggest that this stream water is drinkable, and will keep us young forever.

The Chasm

Look like we have an unlucky day, cloudy weather over here.

It’s time for the cruise!

The captain introduce every single waterfall, geographical fact, history, mountain along the cruise

The captain also gave us a cold waterfall shower.
If it’s not winter and I have an extra cloth, I think I’ll join the shower too.

When the cruise went almost the estuary, we spotted some seal.
And Thanks God a Tawaki penguin is hunting fish!

Tawaki Penguin is one of the rarest penguin in the world, the hardest to spot and only found in NZ.
Their speciality is they live in bush, that’s why the we only can spot them in a few nature place.

The cruise took about 3 hours and mostly is watching waterfall.

More Picture

For the return trip, we have a movie called The World’s Fastest Indian

In my opinion, the journey to Milford Sound is much more interesting than Milford Sound itself, but you have to explore some of them by yourself but not following the tour.
For example you’ll not reached Walk Wire if you following the tour.

If not because winter (with icy road), I will choose to drive myself over there.
Besides, My very original plan is take the 4D3N Routeburn Track from Queenstown to Milford sound.
It’s spoiled by winter spoiled too.

For nature lover, I suggest that never follow tour for this trip.
Because you’ll be surprise how beautiful this place is!