Scenic Cruising

If you looked at yesterday's blog, I first mentioned that I couldn't post pictures. However, we found a way to download the pictures, so I went back and added the pictures to yesterday's post. I'm really glad we found a way to post the pictures, because today's sailing was so scenic, it would be a shame if I couldn't share any pics. 

Thursday we finally reached land after sailing across the open ocean for two days. Our day consisted of viewing gorgeous scenery along the New Zealand west coast, and in three fiords, known as "sounds". The sounds/fiords of the southwest coast of the south island of New Zealand are part of Fiordlands National Park. This park is New Zealand's largest national park, and also its wettest, with an annual average rainfall of 225 inches. Fiordlands National Park contains 14 fiords and many lakes, valleys, and rugged granite mountain peaks with incredible land and seascapes. Many scenes from the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed in Fiordlands National Park. 

We were told that the weather as we travel through the sounds today is some of the clearest weather they've ever had. Apparently they frequently get overcast weather, but today we are blessed with total sunshine for most of the way.

We traveled through three sounds today. The first was Milford Sound. This sound did not connect to any other waterways, so we traveled to the end of the sound, then turned around and traveled back out. You might say we went "there and back again"! This was a great way for us to view both sides of the sound, which we did from the comfort of our stateroom balcony. The sound was 9 miles long. Along the way we saw some bottlenose dolphins alongside the cruise ship. According to our ship naturalist, this is the farthest south that bottlenose dolphins are found. There were waterfalls along the way, with Sterling Falls at the end of the sound. Here are some picture of our spectacular trip through Milford Sound.

Sterling Falls

After re-entering the ocean from Milford Sound, we cruised along the southwest coast of New Zealand and enjoyed some beautiful coastal scenery.

We then entered the second sound, Doubtful Sound. When James Cook first explored this area, he named it Doubtful Harbor because he doubted they could get through it. Doubtful Sound is also called Sound of Silence because it is very quiet here. Enjoy these pictures of the beautiful scenery of Doubtful Sound.

The last sound we went through was Dusky Sound. More beautiful scenery.

We've been enjoying our dinners where most of the group eats together. It's really the only time we interact with the group, as everyone goes their own way during the day. We've really enjoyed getting to know some of the people and have had some great conversations.