If you’re lucky you might catch Fiordland on one of the 100 or so days a year that the sunshine creeps in over the massive gneiss peaks…but if you’re really lucky then you’ll be there when all the magic happens, in the middle of a downpour! 🌧

As soon as you enter the Te Anau-Milford Sound Highway you’re immediately greeted by Fiordland National Park off in the shadows. The road twists and turns for just over 70 miles, all the way passing by curtain after curtain of cascading waterfalls that seem to appear out of nowhere.

This is where the benefit of an active rainfall comes in handy, as the far majority of Fiordland’s waterfalls are only fed by the clouds and quietly disappear once the sunshine arrives.

Due to the remoteness (and crazy expense 😯) of Milford Sound we were only fortunate enough to spend one incredible night in the heart of the park. While the Sound tends to be packed by day with tour busses coming in from Queenstown and the surrounding region, spending the night in Milford should absolutely be on everyone’s bucket list! The sights and sounds were unforgettable…and the food at Milford Lodge’s Pio Pio Cafe was incredible.

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After an insanely good breakfast at Pio Pio we headed out onto to sound with Southern Discoveries to get an even better perspective of this beautiful landscape.

Milford Sound (which technically as a name isn’t correct…and should have been called Milford Fiord) began to form around 400 million years ago. As its glaciers continued their push down towards the Tasman Sea, massive pathways were carved into the rock leaving behind sheer cliff faces and almost 5,000 foot peaks.

It’s actually pretty difficult to maintain a sense of scale while traveling through Fiordland, but just to give you an idea…the waterfall in the picture above is only about 50 feet shorter than Multnomah Falls in Portland, Oregon!

The most unforgettable part of our journey into the sound was when our ship pulled to within a few feet of one of Milford’s permanent waterfalls so that anyone willing to get a little wet could sample some of the freshest water on earth! 😉

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Sadly, it was time to leave the fiords and their “way-too-many-to-count” waterfalls behind us. But with the last of yesterday’s rainfall finishing its race towards the sound, we were treated to a few more sights on the way out of the valley.

We’ll see you on the farm(s)! 😜