My envisioned New Zealand comes alive

World Heritage sites span the globe from the Grand Canyon to The Great Wall of China. In the southwest corner of New Zealand, 2.6 million hectares (I’m pathetic at measurement conversions, so just excuse my switching between metric and standard units.) within four national parks create the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage area. Having just visited Mt. Cook National Park, I next ventured to Fiordland National Park further south to experience another component of these World Heritage lands.

The drive from the lakeside town of Te Anau to Milford Sound passed through vast expanses of untouched land, exactly the images that came to mind when I imagined New Zealand in years past.

Roadside lookout points throughout the Eglington Valley offered great views of sheer mountain faces on either side of the tussock-filled valley. At the Mirror Lakes pull-off, a boardwalk wound through beech forest down to wetlands where the lakes perfectly reflected the mountains in the still water. For a contrasting waterscape down the road at the Chasm, the Cleddau River rushes over and through rock faces, carving out holes and deep falls.

The Te Anau to Milford Highway ends, as expected, at Milford Sound. Tolerating the masses of tour groups was immediately rewarded aboard the boat as the fiord’s hidden coves revealed cascading waterfalls and New Zealand fur seals.

The 1,692-meter-high Mitre Peak rose from the dark, tannin-stained, water to oversee our boat cruise out to the sound’s mouth into the Tasman Sea. My two favorite spots along the ride were Bowen Falls, dropping from a valley in the Darren Ranges, and Harrison Cove where snowmelt from Mt. Pembroke enters the fiord via Harrison River.

Pictured: Top: Mirror Lakes reflecting the mountains across the Eglington Valley. Bottom: Bowen Falls plunging 160 meters into Milford Sound.