Milford Sound


The Te Anau Lodge is our best stop so far. It gets tops marks in every department.  Until the 1980s this building was a convent next door to a school, but the most amazing thing is that it was sited almost 70kms away!  Around 10 years ago its owners decided they liked the lakeside in Te Anau and quite literally moved house!

The present owners, Margaret and George have only been running the lodge for four months, so we actually booked our stay before they took over. They have certainly found their spiritual home. This is a wonderfully restful B&B. 

Much of the furniture dates from the building's original construction in 1936; wood abounds and the whole house has a wonderful charm and warmth.  Our bed for the night was enormous and supremely comfortable with a few more modern conveniences than the Sisters of Mercy nuns would have enjoyed in the house's convent days. 

Breakfast was served in a glorious room, formerly the convent's chapel. The stained glass windows and even the organ are still here. The whole place was peaceful and our freshly cooked breakfast absolutely delicious. We were both sorry that we couldn't stay here longer.  As we left for our drive to Milford Sound, our hosts gave us two more of their fabulous breakfast muffins and we set off. 

I have already written about our drive from Queenstown to Manapouri. The drive from Te Anau to Milford was better. In fact it was of a completely different order of fabulous. We are talking double wow with whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles and a cherry on top, oh and marshmallows too!! This was quite simply the most amazing 120kms of forest, lake and mountain country that a road has ever been carved through.

After just under two hours of utterly mesmerising scenery - a slow drive not as a result of traffic, but as a result of the need to stop and take photographs every few hundred yards -we arrived at the absolute end of State Highway 94, Milford Sound, for another cruise. 

Any sense of residual disappointment we may have felt following our earlier Doubtful Sound excursion was very quickly dispelled. First of all the weather was perfect - blue sky, high cloud, sunshine and a light breeze. Then there was the boat, a gorgeous old fashioned sailing boat, now motorised for work in this fjord, called the Milford Wayfarer. Finally there was, as you might have guessed, the scenery. To describe Milford Sound, it is necessary to reset the wow-ometer. Previous superlatives must now be recalibrated to 'quite pretty'.  On this new scale Milford Sound is simply fantastic.

 So here we go again....soaring mountain peaks, some still with snow, plunging valleys, granite cliffs that sparkle with quartz in the sun, and dense sub-tropical vegetation somehow clinging to the sheer sides of the mountains, fur seals basking on rocky outcrops etc etc. None of the hundreds of pictures I took can convey the majestic grandeur or beauty of this place. You'll have to go and see it for yourself. Simply great!!



The drive back from Milford via Te Anau to Queenstown was four hours and the best part of 400kms back along the same roads I have already attempted and failed to describe. This was just another chance to shoot the wow-ometer off the scale. Our New Zealand odyssey is at an end. Tomorrow we fly from Queenstown to Melbourne via Christchurch. 

We're off to the land of OZ. 

New Zealand has been fantastic, much better than we imagined. The food could have been better, but we didn't come here for its culinary delights. All the same, it would have been nice to find a decent piece of lamb; after all, sheep outnumber people here by 17 to 1. 

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