January 1993
After our exhilarating (and scary) flight to little Milford Sound Airstrip [see: flight to Milford Sound], we were transferred to a kind of youth-hostel-on-a-boat for an overnight cruise up and down Milford Sound. At the time, Milford Sound was being touted at the most beautiful spot in New Zealand - "remote and difficult to get to". The remote part was correct, but due to its popularity, it had become easy to get to (just an expensive flight or a long bus ride from Queenstown). The days of a few hardy souls making it to the famously beautiful spot were long over. Luckily, the New Zealand government was not letting the place get over-developed. There was the airstrip and the hotel/boat anchored in the harbor and that was it.
The weather of Milford Sound was famously changeable, but tended to have a climate of unending rain and clouds due to facing the Tasman Sea. Once again the travel gods smiled on us and we had mostly beautiful weather for our trip up and down the sound. As it turned out, some rain was preferable during the tour because the narrow sound became a collection of waterfalls cascading from the mountains after a heavy rain. We did see a few waterfalls, but apparently after a soaking rain, the sight was amazing. Personally, I was happy for the sunny weather.
We slowly sailed out into the sound and into the open sea. The flat-bottomed boat started rocking in the waves, so we started the journey back to our anchoring point. We would stay on the still waters of the sound overnight and the next day be floated back to the pier where a bus would bump and jostle us throughout the long return to Queenstown via an unsurfaced road. The silence of Milford Sound was amazing. No roads, no people, no anything. The only sounds were the creaking of the boat and voices of many young people drinking beer and sharing travel stories.
Brian, MAP, and I took a breathtaking flight through the mountains to New Zealand's most iconic spot and the weather had cooperated. I wish I had liked it more - maybe it was just too easy? Perhaps sharing it with so many others in exactly the same way rendered it too "common"? Milford Sound never entered my personal pantheon of beautiful places I had visited and I'm not sure why?