Wanderung 26

Walkabout, Sailabout

March - May 2012


 

3 Previous Day
Next Day 4
Index


 

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012: Fiordland National Park, New Zealand

Bob:

Our day of "scenic cruising" in Fiordland National Park had a rather early start; we were up and about at 6:30 a.m. to eat breakfast and watch the pilot come aboard, after which the Sea Princess slowly steamed toward the mouth of Milford Sound. It was still quite dark when we ambled onto the foredeck in front of the buffet on the Lido deck. The pre-dawn photography while the ship was moving was quite difficult, complicated by the fact that it was very cold and windy to boot. We did, however, see the first faint blush of sunrise on the North side of the entrance to the sound and were relieved that it looked as if it was going to be a clear, sunny day (rare in that area of New Zealand).

The mouth of the sound turned out to be quite a narrow opening with maybe 50 yards or so of clearance from the ship to the almost shear rock walls on either side of us. As daylight slowly dawned, we were able to see farther down into the sound, and pretty much the entire passage inland was sided by steep rock walls plunging almost vertically into the water. Very scenic!

The walls were so steep, in fact, that the tangled mat of beech trees and bushes that grow on the very thin layer of topsoil over the bare rock walls, sometimes collapsed in a "tree slide". A tree slide is just like a rock slide, except it is just this mat of all the vegetation that goes plummeting down the mountainside. The net effect, however, is very much like a landslide in that you see the narrow scar or slash of raw rock running down the side of the mountain where the vegetation used to be.

Monika:

One of the highlights of our cruise was going to be cruising the Fiordland National Park of south-west New Zealand. On our last New Zealand cruise it had been too stormy in the Tasman Sea, so we had skipped the Fiordlands NP and steamed between the North and South Islands of New Zealand instead (Wanderung 22). This time we were hoping for better luck and when we awoke at sunrise we seemed to be stopped in front of the entrance to Milford Sound. Yeah!!

We quickly got dressed and hurried up to the Lido and Sun Decks forward to start taking pictures. It was still darkish, with the sun rising slightly off to the east. The ship seemed to be pretty much stopped waiting for the pilot. So we thought this was a good time to grab a quick breakfast, before it got interesting.

Bob:

At the head of Milford Sound, our Captain spun the ship around to head back out to sea. The head of Milford sound has to be one of the most beautiful places I have seen in all our travels. In many if not most scenic spots, the scenery is quite beautiful in one direction or one side, but quite rarely is it beautiful simply everywhere you look. The head of Milford sound was just such a magical place where we had just gorgeous views ahead, behind, and to the right and left of us. Quite amazing, really, and we felt very lucky to see it on a clear, sunny day as it is cloudy and rainy about 220 days out of each year down there.

Instead of the usual West wind that lifts over the mountain ridges and creates the huge amounts of annual rainfall (9 to 20+ feet each year!), we had an East wind, probably produced by a high pressure area to the South. That weather system fed cool, dry air over the mountains directly at us. The air was dry and clear, which was a huge plus, but that East wind also produced a huge relative headwind on the bow when the ship went steaming up the fjord, and I was severely buffeted while trying to take pictures. The at least 30 mph wind also chilled us to the bone and made my hands go numb even though the temperature was probably in the high 40s or low 50s that morning. I had to occasionally stop and put my hands in my pants pockets to even be able to function, and finally we retreated to the Horizon Café on the Lido deck right behind us for a hot cup of coffee.

Monika:

When we came back, we watched the pilot ship approaching and a pilot and park ranger jumped up to our ship. It was cold and windy but clear, and we were dressed for cold. Once we got underway, the park ranger came on the intercom and started telling us what we were seeing.

The entrance to Milford Sound, one of the 14 fjords of Fjordland, is narrow and somewhat hidden. The cliffs are steep and go right into the sound. The sky lightened and we really had a beautiful morning to steam down the sound to the large bay in front of the tiny settlement of Milford. From here day cruises go up and down the sound. There is a road to the next bigger town and it is supposed to be beautiful. Several of the passengers got off here, to go overland to our next port of Port Chalmers/Dunedin.

This gave us a nice time to take pictures and try our hand at some panoramics. On some of the peaks in the distance you could see the glaciers. No new snow had fallen, but it was still beautiful. The park ranger named all the peaks. I am glad they all have names....

Bob:

The annual 220 days of rain does, however, produce lush temperate rain forest type vegetation even on quite thin top soil on the sides of the mountains. Beech and some other kinds of trees went from sea level several thousand feet up the mountain slopes, then scrub brush continued for another couple hundred feet, and above that was just Alpine vegetation such as moss and lichen. I heard that when it does rain, the mountainsides are decorated with hundreds of small waterfalls, but since it was sunny and dry the day we visited, we just saw a few of the larger, more permanent waterfalls. Some of them were threaded across the mountainside and were quite pretty.

After steaming back to the mouth of the sound, the Sea Princess steamed south-southwest along the coast to the opening of Thompson Sound. We were chilled to the bone after being out in the cold wind for a couple of hours, so we took that opportunity to slip into the Lido buffet for lunch, which they fortunately started serving at 11:30 a.m.

Monika:

Steaming back down Milford Sound gave us a different view of the various cliffs and waterfalls, so we were still "knipsing" away (American: snapping photos). As we went south along the coast, the ranger came to the Princess Theater for a talk on the geology and fauna of the area. What I had not been aware of, was that New Zealand was home to several small flightless birds besides the Kiwi, including some parrots. However, rats, stouts, and opossums that the white man brought with him have brought some of them to near extinction. The park service has worked hard to make some of the islands in the park pest-free, so that the native birds have a fighting chance to survive. Altogether it was a fascinating talk.


 

Bob:

Thompson Sound turned out the be a little less grand than Milford Sound, mostly because the mountains plunged into the water at only a 50 or 60 degree angle rather than the 70-80 degree angle of the mountainsides in Milford Sound. Another factor was the simple fact that the mid day sunlight illuminates mountains in such a way as to make them seem far less grand than either the morning or evening sunlight. Still, Thompson Sound was really quite beautiful, fully comparable to the fjords of, say, the panhandle of Alaska.

Unexpectedly, Thompson Sound connects to Doubtful Sound, and a fully navigatable channel runs down Doubtful Sound back out to the Tasman Sea. That was the route the Sea Princess took, which made it unnecessary to spin the ship around in the narrow confines of the fjord, but which also substituted views of Doubtful Sound for the return-trip views of Thompson Sound we would otherwise have seen.

Monika:

Back in the cabin, we downloaded the pictures and cleared the camera, since Milford Sound was not the only sound for us. Just after lunch, we traveled into Thompson Sound around an island and out at Doubtful Sound. These sounds were wider and not quite as sheer as Milford Sound, but still quite beautiful. One really had to look to all sides to catch all the beautiful images. The sun had come out, the sky was blue, and although it still was windy, it was just beautiful.

Bob:

I was, by the time the ship exited Doubtful Sound, completely exhausted. Just being on your feet walking around taking pictures for a total of about 4 hours would explain some of that fatigue, but the rest was no doubt due to the cold and strong wind buffeting that I experienced whenever I tried to take a picture, and we took around 800 pictures that day. So we retreated back to our cabin to warm up, where I promptly fell asleep while Monika backed up the pictures on the computer while we recharged the camera battery as much as we could do--each charge gave us 200-250 pictures, so we had to swap batteries several times during the day.

About an hour later, I was awakened by the Captain's announcement that we were entering the last set of fjords for the day, starting with Breaksea Sound. Grabbing the camera with its partially-recharged battery and all my layers of clothing, I staggered back out onto the foredeck with Monika to start taking pictures of the last transit of the fjords by the Sea Princess.

The Breaksea Sound that we entered was also less majestic than Milford Sound, again due to the more gentle slope of the mountains into the water. It had, fortunately, warmed up during the day so that my hands were no longer going numb while I was taking pictures. The sun was going down in the West, so the sunlight was a bit more interesting than the flat, noon-day sun we had experienced in Thompson and Doubtful Sound, but not as interesting as it would have probably been right before sunset.

Monika:

After we exited Doubtful Sound, we went down to our cabin. I downloaded the pictures and cleared the camera a second time while Bob laid down for a short nap. I had the TV on the channel that had the web cam on the bow of the ship, and also all the comments from the ranger. So when he came on telling us we were going to enter Breaksea Sound, I woke up Bob and we hurried back up to our place at the bow of the ship. This sound was even wider. Again we went around another island to another sound and back out to the Tasman Sea. So altogether we were in 5 of the 14 sounds and could see the differences. But beauty was everywhere, whether it was sheer cliffs, waterfalls, or cliffs where you could clearly see the tree line. It really was important to keep looking around.

Bob:

We kept a close eye peeled for seals along the shore, but never did see any. We were lucky enough, however, to encounter a pod of bottle-nose dolphins in the channel between Breaksee Sound and Dusky Sound where we finally exited the fjord complex. We watched the pod approach and it was quite clear that they intentionally swam over to cross our path and then swam down the port side of the ship to play in the ship's wake. And boy did they have fun roaring through the waves of the wake and jumping in the air as they were boosted along by the wave crests. It was total fun to watch and I did manage to photograph some of them leaping into the air, so I was happy.

Monika:

Suddenly, one of guys at the bow with us, yelled "Dolphins!". And indeed there was a pod of them. You could see them clearly as they swam to the portside. There they decided they had an audience and started to perform jumps and leaps. Bob actually managed to catch some of that in photographs!

Bob:

After steaming pretty much due South between the sounds, the Sea Princess steered West-Southwest again to steam back out onto the Tasman Sea. I was bone-weary by then, but still had fun photographing the beautiful scenery, cute little islands, fantastically-shaped rocks, and so forth. We were both so tired that we were tempted to just have a snack in the Lido buffet and turn in for the night, but we didn't want to miss a mealtime chat with our tablemates, so in the end we pulled ourselves together and went down to dinner in the Rigoletto Dining room. The conversation energized us and kept us going during the meal, but afterwards we just collapsed in our bed for the evening.

Monika:

What a wonderful way of ending this magical day. We kept taking pictures until we were well clear of our last fjord and it was time to get dressed for dinner. We fully appreciated, how lucky we had been to have such a wonderful, sunny day in an area where it rains over 200 days a year.



Copyright 2012 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

3Previous Day
Next Day4
Index

Prolog Map of Drive in Australia Map of Transpacific Cruise Epilog

March 2012
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
April 2012
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30
May 2012
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 30

Return to the Wanderungs Homepage.
Sign the Guestbook or Read the Guestbook.
Comments about this site? Email the Webmaster.
Contact Bob and Monika at bob_monika@hotmail.com.