Pacific Fiordland

"The Eighth Wonder of the World!" was the poet Rudyard Kipling's description of His Majesty Milford Sound. Although Kipling was not an overall feeling, it still expressed the feeling that many had on their first visit to this remote corner of New Zealand's southern island, the twelfth largest island in the world.

Fiordland National Park is located in the isolated southwestern corner of the country and borders the unpredictable Tasman Sea, which separates New Zealand approximately 1200 miles from Australia. From north to south, this park stretches only 160 km along the coast, but more than a dozen fjords run through it to give it almost 1600 kilometers of shoreline. With an area of ​​about 5,000 square kilometers, the park is one of the largest in the world.

The only way to get to most of the fjords is still by boat or seaplane. After nearly two decades of work with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows, a 75-mile driveway at the bottom of one of the most spectacular fjords, Milford Sound, was completed in 1953.

Portal to Fiordland

The double lakes of Manapouri and Te Anau are beautiful, deep (1,468 feet) and dark and form an attractive gateway to the park. They are surrounded by mountains with beech forests at a tree height of about 3000 feet, which gives the impression that a dark green velvet has been spread over the mountains to soften their rough contours.

North of these lakes lies the Eglinton River Valley, a shallow, gently sloping subalpine valley about two to three miles wide and from which snow-capped peaks rise almost vertically five to six thousand feet on each side. . Our Milford Sound route winds through open meadows in and out of clearings and beech forests, following the sparkling river with snowy water, one of the most beautiful rivers for fishing. Land flight.

Hidden between the brown canopy and another meadow are many subalpine plants with such delicate colors that they can not be easily seen. The multicolored lupins that grow in abundance on the pebbles of the river stand in contrast to the red, silver and black species of beech trees.

Suddenly in front of us, at the end of a long, straight, narrow and tree-lined avenue, there is an impressive snow-capped peak between the forest and the sky. As we walk down the avenue, the muscles in our eyes literally start to struggle to keep our beaks sharp, as it slowly narrows and disappears from sight! But that's not all, because when you leave this "endangered mountain range" and go into a clearing, not one but five peaks appear, each of which may have been the culprit. Mirage.

The secret obviously lies in the imperceptible but considerable height of the road, which little by little obscures the view of the mountain. However, we are sure that the road builders did not organize it on purpose.

Finally, about 60 kilometers from Te Anau, the highway lies in a valley in the form of a sink with a diameter of one or two kilometers. Where there may be a drainage hole in a sink is relatively where the Homer Tunnel in Milford has its eastern portal, which seems pitifully small at the base of the peaks that rise like giant tombstones at 2000 meters. Quiet mountain almost drowns out a misty stream that jumps along with the waterfall's characteristic essence.

The tunnel rises above the tree line, so the valley has few trees and the growing trees are confused and dense. But under the shrubs and the brown tip are real, delicately colored alpine plants. In December, the giant buttercups turn the valley floor into gold and about a month later into white daisies.

Many visitors stop here because the three-block tunnel has a driveway or lane and is open 25 minutes every hour. This rest is welcome for our senses and gives us time to consider the beauty of this extraordinary land.

To Milford

At the end of our break, the darkness of the Homer Tunnel emphasizes the short distance to Milford. Once through the tunnel, a pool-shaped valley greets the eyes and appears larger as the road descends 700 meters in tight curves and is surrounded by lush vegetation of native shrubs, ferns and forests. , all evidence of annual precipitation. over 250 inches. The majestic arboreal bears dominate all the vegetation. No wonder New Zealand has made the fern its national emblem!

Finally, the road stops near the water. Behind us the rainforest is crowned with peaks that rise up as you retreat five, six, seven, eight, nine thousand feet. Further to the left, southwest is the famous Pico Miter, the tallest cliff of its kind (5,560 feet), while across the fjord is a few miles from a 5,160-foot-high cliff in tête-à-tête with another, the 4290. Meters high. It's very similar to a lion talking to a lying elephant! And so they are called: the lion and the elephant.

What a nice place! It is a truly human experience to be at sea level lowered by snow capped peaks. As we cruise through the strait to the Tasman Sea on a tourist boat, we can enjoy the thrills of Kipling on this 14 km long marine canyon which is almost 1600 meters deep in the main water but is reduced to a fraction of that depth in your mouth. in the sea.

Everywhere we are forced to look at the sky and soberly think that cliffs which dry up three hundred meters and more above us are thrown into the water at an equal distance. Heavy annual rains in this region, averaging 1 inch per day last year, greatly contribute to Milford's green splendor. On a clear day after the rain, hundreds of waterfalls flow in sparkling streaks along the stone walls of the fjord. Here and there we come across a colony of seals or penguins basking on the rocks. The only inhabitants look like this great aquatic paradise.

When the ocean waves start at the Milford Sound Estuary and take off reverses, we are not surprised to learn that the ground pilot, Captain Cook, passed the bay thinking it was was just another bay.

Not formed by glaciers

The captain of the speedboat informed tourists that glaciers of enormous proportions would cut this and other fjords off a plateau during the "Ice Age". Proof of this is the smooth side walls of the fjord, which are marked at an almost horizontal angle. It was a sign that something on and along these walls had been scratched and that glaciers are considered the only ones capable of doing it. He may know otherwise because we left him a copy of a book that proves that humans and the earth came here, not by evolution but by creation.

We explain that glaciers move by gravity, and for one of the imaginary proportions that would likely cut Milford Sound and surrounding valleys, a currently nonexistent “mother” mountain of enormous heights would be needed to provide the slope.

Where would the water come from to produce the supposed 600 feet of ice? Evaporation from the oceans has been cited as a source, but in order to produce enough water vapor to condense and fall like snow to compress into the colossal glaciers it needs, the oceans would have to boil! And this at a time when hundreds of years of frost must prevail to produce this amount of ice