Milford Sound, New Zealand.

We were told to watch out for the roaring waterfalls that flow right by the road on the way to Milford Sound. We got quite a different sight. All the waterfalls had frozen over leaving these long dangling icicles. Pretty cool.

Waterfall of icicles

Reena took me on a cruise on the Milford Sound for my birthday. What a lovely present!

Me

This part of New Zealand gets between 7-9m of rainfall per year. The largest 24 hour downpour over last year was over 500mm! With over 200 days of rain each year we were lucky to get sunshine!

Mitre Peak - one of the highest mountains to come straight out of the sea.

Europeans incorrectly named this area as a 'sound' around 150 years ago. It's proper name would be a 'fjord'. The mountains were created by the erosive forces of glaciers. Sounds are created by rivers. Fjords have 'U' shape valleys, and sounds have 'V' shape valleys. At least that's how I understood it!

Waterfall seen from cruise boat.

New Zealand's closest point to Australia.

We had dolphins swimming around the boat! Quite difficult to get a photo...

The Maori name for New Zealand is 'Aotearoa' - its meaning 'The land of the long white cloud'. We saw some!

Cool clouds.