{"id":432,"date":"2011-03-05T06:07:31","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T06:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/?p=432"},"modified":"2014-09-27T16:22:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-27T16:22:13","slug":"milford-track-day-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/milford-track-day-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Milford Track – Day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our last day of this trip actually involved no hiking. We were allowed to sleep in, until 7:15. After breakfast, we boarded a boat for a scenic cruise of Milford Sound. The weather this morning was almost perfect, if you like spectacular vistas of mountains and water. The next 3 photos were taken before we boarded the boat.<\/p>\n

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As we sailed down Milford Sound, our boat came across this group of kayakers. We were cold, so I hope they were bundled up well.<\/p>\n

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Our hour and a half cruise took us out of the sound into the Tasman Sea. This is looking toward Australia some 1000+ miles away.<\/p>\n

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Milford Sound has a resident seal colony. \"\"<\/a>
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You can see how steep the rock walls bordering the sound are. Not surprisingly, they get no less steep underwater, this is why the sound is over a 1000 feet deep and has no good anchorage for large ships. (Cruise ships do often sail in, turn around, and head out again.) Just as on the track, there were spectacular water falls into the sound. Because the sound is so deep, our boat could literally bring its bow into the falls. Below on the right, you can see the kayakers again, keeping a more respectful distance.<\/p>\n

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Just before the end of the cruise we came upon these sea gulls. The dark band in the photo below is made up of small mussels that live right at the water line. The gulls seem to be feasting on them.<\/p>\n

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\nThe cruise was a wonderful, relaxing ending to a wonderful, but difficult hike. Nina and I probably disagree on the emphasis that we would put on each of these adjectives. Once we were off the boat, it was back onto the bus for a 5+ hour trip to Queenstown. The part leaving Milford Sound and going through the Homer Tunnel had spectacular scenery. However, since we did not stop, I do not have any pictures. The rest of the ride was just long. For an additional thousand dollars, you could fly back to Queenstown on a helicopter in just 35 minutes. Five of our group took this option; it certainly was a spectacular day for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our last day of this trip actually involved no hiking. We were allowed to sleep in, until 7:15. After breakfast, we boarded a boat for a scenic cruise of Milford Sound. The weather this morning was almost perfect, if you like spectacular vistas of mountains and water. The next 3 photos were taken before we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-zealand","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":458,"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wright-macdonald.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}