Today the ship took us through Dusky Sound, Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound. No-one seems all that clear on why they're called Sounds when technically they really are fjords. Probably Captain Cook didn't realise this at the time and no-one wants to correct him now :-)
We cruised through these same fjords on the Diamond Princess back in December 2008 - it mostly rained that day. Today it didn't rain but there was also very little sun. Apparently Fjordland is the wettest place in New Zealand and one of the wettest on earth, so I guess it's expecting a bit much to hope for the sun to shine.
The scenery is simply amazing - huge sea cliffs and glacial vallies all of which have been photographed a million times by people who are much smarter with their camera than I am, so I'm not going to post any here.
There was a naturalist on the ship - he gave a few talks which I didn't go to; I kept missing them as they're not well advertised. He also gave a running commentary today. It was mostly just telling us which particular waterfall or island we were looking at, but he did cover a few other things as well - for example he showed us the glacial valley where they rediscovered the kakapo after thinking it was extinct.
We left Milford Sound on schedule around 5pm, but then when we were at dinner we realised that we could still see land (which we weren't expecting) and the ship wasn't moving. Then we went out on deck after dinner and it was pretty clear that we were still just outside Milford Sound. An hour or so later they explained what was going on - someone had been taken ill and they were concerned that they'd need to evacuate them off the ship. However, they decided that this isn't necessary, so we finally got underway.
Only three more nights and two more days to go :-(
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