Te Anau & Milford Sound

From several options given to us by a visitor information centre in Te Anau, we chose sea kayaking on Milford Sound (guided paddles for five hours). The other options were helicopter flights, boat cruises and guided adventure walking (on Milford Sound or on Doubtful Sound).

So here we go...
Last Friday we headed out super early (at 6:30 AM) to Milford Sound. This road trip in Fiordland’s alpine area offers impressive views. We were very much in a hurry and didn’t stop to enjoy the scenary. It took us about two hours to get from Te Anau to Milford Sound by car.

The kayaking instructor was very nice and quite a character. He had to cheer us up quite a bit; he also added “Cheers” at the end of each phrase... Every time some cruise boat approached us, the instructor cheerfully started imitating either “playing a guitar” or “fishing” with his kayak paddle. We were told to keep together and do “a raft” to handle big waves when cruise boats were passing by. Our team included six tourists, so two persons in each kayak, plus the instructor. At some point we were very close to a 150m high waterfall (doesn’t happen to you every day, does it?). Once we pointed out that there was something wrong with our kayak rudder (the thing controlled by foot pedals to assist steering), the instructor magically took out a mini sail and the whole group started sailing. And luckily enough, we had a good wind for about 20 minutes. Except for the fact that the weather spoiled (it started raining a bit), our kayak rudder didn’t work well, we got wet shirts and cold feet, we still enjoyed this five-hours-long kayaking trip :)

Quite an experience to remember: gliding a kayak between cliff walls… Attached are some photos of this wilderness area :)

Jerome & Oxana