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With the world famous Milford track walk booked, we headed down to the Fiordland in the South of New Zealand with our boots packed and our bags haphazardly filled. See we had spent the last few weeks frantically working whilst trying to buy a house up in Auckland, meaning all our holiday planning went out of the window!

Come the night before our 7:30am flight we had nothing booked, no walking gear prepared and no clue how we were going to do one of the worlds most famous multiday hikes.

As we tossed the coin at 8pm on Wednesday night to see if we should go or not, the coin decided we were indeed going on holiday. It did however decide we shouldn’t do the Milford track walk and instead do day walks and drive around sightseeing.

This felt much easier and less stressful solution after the chaos of the last few weeks buying a house! And yes this is how we make big decisions in our lives 😂

So now you know the ‘before’, what about the trip itself?

The Southland is our Oyster!

With our bags packed and hire car booked we had an open 10 days in the Southland with no plan other than to see the sights and relax.

We decided on a trip to Te Anau as Sarah had never visited before and it is the gateway to Milford Sound and the Fiordland, which just so happens to be my favourite place in New Zealand.

Te Anau

Arriving in Te Anau on Thursday afternoon we were taken aback by the beauty of the place. The town is located at the side of Te Anau Lake, with nearly a full 360° of Mountains surrounding the Lake. It was also Autumn in New Zealand, so the Lake was lined with orange, yellow and brown leaved trees, all shedding for winter. See in Auckland, up north, we mainly have evergreen trees and so seeing the leaves in Te Anau was a unexpected bonus! I’d forgotten how nice a proper Autumn was!

State Highway 94

If anybody would ever ask of my favourite road trips (go on, ask me!) the South Island would probably provide 3 of my top 5. State Highway 94 from Te Anau to Milford Sound is up there as one of the most stunning drives in the world in my humble opinion.

Starting out in Te Anau at sunrise we drove maybe 40 minutes alongside Lake Te Anau, which is beautiful in itself. The sky was clear, not a cloud in sight and the sunrise created a pink and yellow hue above the mountain tops.

An hour into the trip you start entering the Fiordland, which slowly builds up Moutain after Mountain, towering up and around you at every turn in the road. The yellow tussock grass at Edlinton Valley provides another unique and awe inspiring view through your car window. “How can this place get anymore beautiful?” you ask, as you stop at the roadside to view the ‘Mirror lakes’ on display.

“Even somebody with a crooked neck could enjoy these mountains” we overhear a lady say to her friend looking down at the Moutain tops reflecting back up to us from the lake.

Past Lake Gunn and Lake Fergus we crossed the ‘Divide’ and this is where you truly feel that you’ve entered another world!

The mountain tops reach higher, snow capped and rugged. The metamorphic rock gets steeper and steeper, no living thing can now cling to that slope. The valley bottom is rich in thick rainforest and water, splashing down in countless waterfalls, falling from what looks like above the clouds. There are boulders bigger than busses scattered across the glacial valley, the road clinging to the side of the valley, with a thunderous river flowing heavily alongside.

This place seems to be the home to Giants and a Jurassic like wilderness I’ve never seen anywhere else, it’s truly breathtaking.

As we climbed from the bottom of Hollyford valley, cutting through the ancient rainforest the weather all of a sudden turned. A car half white with snow drove past in the opposite direction, and within minutes we were met by a wall of blustery snow fall!

The road slowly and steadily wound itself up the valley to the top of Homer tunnel which is a 1.2km road tunnel that opened in 1953!

By this point the roads were getting thick with snow and we had to be really careful with our driving. Especially driving with one eye on the views and constantly picking your mouth up off the floor! But we eventually arrived at Homer tunnel.

It’s probably the most exciting tunnel queue there is though. Each side is let through one at a time, giving the other side’s traffic 5 minutes to get out of their car and take photos of the truly spectacular scenery around them. For us, the snowfall just added to the beauty. Honestly it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up just thinking about it!

Homer tunnel isn’t like your channel tunnel or any I have been through before. It feels raw and massively unsafe (i’m sure it is but it doesn’t feel it). There is a constant river flowing down the tunnel, and the tunnel walls are just rock! No nice cement barrier between you and the Mountain to make you feel safer, nope, this is raw, built yesterday kind of feel. The tunnel then slopes down at a steep angle that makes you realise how much you’ve climbed up the valley!

On the other side of the tunnel we were greeted by 3 cheeky Keas; my favourite NZ bird, playfully chewing on some waiting car’s door rubber.

The new valley we entered was equally as awe inspiring and covered with a blanket of fresh snowfall. So the several U bends that greeted us were taken with extreme caution (& excitement!).

We drove down the valley with the mountain tops feeling upon us. Waterfalls crashing down the near vertical faces everywhere we looked! The clouds from the snow slowly dispersed and by the time we got to Milford Sound car park, there was no sign of snow at all! Of course we had dropped 1270 meters downhill from the Tunnel and now we were at sea level meaning the temperature had risen from 2°c to 8°c in the space of 15 minutes driving.

Milford Sound

This was my 4th visit to Milford Sound and Sarah’s 2nd, so we knew what to expect, but that took none of the excitement away from us as we entered the Sound.

This was indeed the first time I had been in Autumn, with the fresh snowfall atop the mountains, it really made it picture perfect!

If you ever get the chance to do this road trip, a mere 2 hours from Te Anau, I strongly urge you to do so. It’s a place that needs to be seen and there’s no surprise to me that they call it the 8th wonder of the natural world!

View from the car park at Milford Sound (looking away from the sound itself)

There will be a full Gallery of images coming about this day to Milford Sound which I will share in time.

To Be Continued…

Dale

SH94 - Milford Sound

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Te Anau

State Highway 94

Milford Sound