NZ Day 14: Milford or Doubtful

One of the big questions for the last few days has been: Milford Sound or Doubtful Sound. As we started to make our way down the west coast and mapped out our travel plans, we decided to stay in Te Anau for three nights, to be able to visit one of the sounds/fjords everyone is raving about. Unfortunately there are two sounds that are accessible to the public. You can go there on a day trip or over night. For the Milford Sound, there are at least four boat companies offering to take you and for the Doubtful Sound there are two companies all with multiple offerings.

When I checked a week ago, all companies with online booking had space available for both Milford and Doubtful, so there was no hurry. We tried to weigh our options: overnight cruises promised to be more scenic, but they are also awfully expensive. Milford promised to be more spectacular visually, but Doubtful was more special since fewer people went there and it was also much longer.

We went back and forth between the options and finally settled on a day trip to Doubtful Sound, only to find that in the meantime all seats were taken. With that option gone we went for the longest daytime cruise (3h) we could find on Milford.

From Te Anau it is about two hours by car to get to Milford. This is not as bad as it sounds since there are many scenic views on the way there. I even got that mirror lake picture I have been trying to catch a few days back. Milford itself was spectacular and the weather excellent. The weather part is especially notable for a place with 200 days of rain a year.

We do have crass mountains in Switzerland too, but ours do not end up in the sea. The water is a huge plus and the nice boats too. Much more comfortable than riding up to Gotthard Pass in a Postauto.