The highlight of my trip to New Zealand was our visit to Fiordland National Park. The park is located on the west side of the south island in New Zealand and is pretty remote. A week before we visited, a major flood had washed out several many sections of the main road to get to the Milford Sound, which is in Fiordland National Park and is one of New Zealand's most popular tourist attraction. Thousands of people were stranded when the area got 10 percent of the annual rainfall in three days, causing flooding, road washouts, and landslides. We were pretty worried that our land excursion would be canceled because of the flooding and road closures.
Below is a photo of our ultimate destination, the Milford Sound.
We got off our cruise ship a couple of days before, got on a bus and drove across the south island stopping in Queenstown overnight. The plan was to take the bus across the south island touring along the way and then take a small ferry out to meet up with our cruise ship in the Milford Sound. Temporary gravel roads through the mountains had been constructed and opened a day or two before we arrived. Once we entered the park we would have to meet up with a park ranger who would lead a convoy of buses and cars through the temporary roads to the Milford Sound. If we didn't get there from Queenstown on time to join the convoy, we would be delayed for another day and miss our ship. So we didn't get much time to stop in the eastern side of the park before the mountains, but I took lots of pictures through the bus windows and during our one bathroom stop along the way.
One of the stops we made before we started to cross the mountains was at Mirror Lakes. I'm sure from the photos below you can figure out why it was named Mirror Lakes.
The scenery driving through over the mountain was equally beautiful. It was challenging to capture photos through a dusty bus window, but these didn't turn out too bad.
Here is a section of the mountain road that was luckily paved but there were many parts like this that we went through that were loose gravel. It was a little unnerving, especially when we crossed the temporary bridges.
After our morning bus ride, we arrived at our ferry to rejoin our cruise ship. The ride out into Milford Sound where we would meet the ship was the highlight of the trip. We passed several huge waterfalls cascading off the mountains surrounding the Sound.
As much as we enjoy cruising big ships, this was a great excursion to see sights that staying on the ship wouldn't have allowed. Here are a couple of shots as we left Milford Sound harbor and approached the cruise ship.
