The Most Beautiful Place on Earth

We have now seen the most beautiful place on the earth. It is Milford Sound in Fiordland, New Zealand. Mindy tells me that I have been misspelling Fiordland as "Fjordland." I have! I rarely misspell things and I have consistently misspelled "Fjordland." ... Nevermind! I just looked on dictionary.com and both fjord or fiord is correct. So, I am right again.

Milford Sound is the northernmost of 14 fjords in southern New Zealand. The rest are not accessible by road. There are several multi-day "walks" (hikes really, but they are called Walks here) that access some of the others, but they are mainly only accessible by sea.

Anyway ... Milford Sound is really just an inlet with super steep rock mountains that plunge into the sea. There are many waterfalls feeding the Sound. We took a 2-hour cruise from the end of the fjord (mistakenly called a sound by Captain Cook) to the sea and back, which was easily the most amazing thing I have ever done. My eyes and brain hurt from trying to take in all the majesty.

We were lucky enough to see a whole huge pod of Dusky Dolphins and some really funny fur seals.

After the cruise, we drove and drove and drove to Dunedin on the eastern side of the island. The scenery was pretty but mundane -- just rolling green hills and tones of sheep and stag. It was a nice break from the stark, overwhelming beauty of the Sound.

We arrived at Dunedin late, bought some groceries and checked into a holiday park. We have learned to look for "holiday parks" rather than "motor camps" because motor camps are scary and tend to serve as permanent or semi-permanent residences for the downtrodden rather than just overnight camps for holiday-goers.

This morning we went on a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. Cadbury is the BEST chocolate in the World and we found out why. Apparently it has to do with the quality of the full cream milk from the Otago Region in New Zealand. Unfortunately, the factory was closed for the holidays from December 22 to January 15, so we didn't get to see the factory, but did see some really cool stuff and got some free chocolate.

Tomorrow we go to the Otago Peninsula to see the only permanent albatross colony in the world and to see some yellow-eyed penguins and more fur seals.

Cheers!