Travel Blog: Milford Sound

Thanks for waiting so long for the next post! Milford Sound seems quite a long time ago; in fact, it has been just over a month since we were there.

In the interim, COVID-19 managed to wreak havoc with the rest of the World Cruise, along with the rest of the world. We had been hearing about the virus in China as we sailed around the South Pacific, and then began to get news of the spread to Europe while we were in New Zealand. By the time we reached Sydney, Singapore and the Indonesian ports had been closed to ships, and Italy was seeing more and more cases. Our itinerary was changed to stay in Australia once we left Darwin, heading toward Perth, and then across the Indian Ocean to Mumbai. But as we continued, more and more countries were closing their borders to cruise ships, and ultimately Crystal decided to end the World Cruise in Perth.

We didn’t continue the blog then, as we were busy packing up, figuring out how to fly home as quickly as possible, and commiserating with our fellow guests that we would lose the last 5 weeks of the cruise. But we all agreed that it was the best thing to do, and that we should be home with our families as the virus continued to spread around the globe. So here we are, finishing the story from home. Hope you enjoy the photos of the ports we did manage to reach!

February 27, 2020

We left off last time as we were heading into some bad weather in the Cook Strait and the Tasman Sea around the bottom of New Zealand. The captain wasn’t lying when he said we would be rocking and rolling for a number of hours. It was quite rough, with high winds and a lot of rain – we’d had quite a lot of rain on the cruise so far, so that was nothing new – so that the outer decks were closed.

Looking out over the lifeboat deck

From the Deck 5 windows at Crystal Cove

And on the other side of the ship....

As we had been expecting to visit Dusky and Doubtful Sounds as well, we had both a naturalist guide to the Fjordland area and a fjord pilot on board the ship. Captain Vorland was very proud to tell us that the pilot had been extremely impressed by how well Serenity managed the bad weather, as compared to some of the other ships he had been on in similar conditions. But no matter how well she handled it, Serenity wasn’t quite fast enough to get us to Dusky or Doubtful Sounds, and we were told that the sea and wind conditions would have made it difficult to enter them, anyway.

We did make it to Milford Sound, a little later than scheduled in the original itinerary. The good thing of this was that, with all the rain we’d had, the waterfalls in the Sound would be nothing less than spectacular. We were looking forward to this, as our other visits to the Sound were all in good, clear weather.

It was drizzling as we sailed in, but the waterfalls were already coming into view. The very low clouds and mist made it look really eerie and otherworld-like.

There was a lot of fog ahead of us toward the end of the fjord, and the drizzle continued. We were wondering if we’d be able to see the really awesome falls down that way, but the captain and the pilot continued to point Serenity’s bow into the fog. Maybe they knew something we didn’t… We just continued to gape at the amazing scenery all around us.

Bowen Falls, closest to the end of the sound.

Rather than join everyone else on the upper decks at the front of the ship, we stayed on the open aft Deck 11, down from our stateroom. We could hear the commentary, and had nice vistas from the back of the ship. It was also much quieter there, with only about 6 or 8 of us, so we could hear the commentary and move from side to side of the ship as we liked.

The volume of water made for some beautiful
cascades.

A panoramic shot of the sound behind us. Mitre Peak is left of centre.

As we reached the end of the fjord, we noticed that the clouds were lifting, and there were actually blue patches in the sky. Mother Nature was taking pity on us after all!!

The sun finally started to brighten things up.

One of the falls. You don't notice how high
everything is until you see the sailboat.

It couldn't get much better than this!

There was a small tour boat taking visitors who had driven to the Sound on a tour. It was actually great to have it out there, just to give the fjord some scale.