Fiordland always featured the most spectacular photos in the magazines I read before travelling to New Zealand, so my expectations were high. Upon boarding the cruise on the sound I realised that I had discounted a nasty adversary that never features in the pictures, the bad weather and poor visibility.

Finally there was a breath of fresh air on the bus from Queenstown to Te Anau. The two folks who were with me on the bus in the previous trips stopped in Queenstown and a group of 19 replaced them. Most of the people were British and already knew each other, so they were hanging out together. I was indifferent to them, and instead made friends with Klaus and Mark, an Austrian and a lone British. Klaus was travelling around New Zealand for two months during his summer holiday break from University, and Mark was here for a year on a working holiday. The three of us were going to spend an extra two days in Te Anau, so we spent most of the time together.

The trip from Queenstown took about 2 ½ hours and at 9.30 I was having a venison pie in a café in village of Te Anau. The plan for the day was to go on a Milford Sound cruise via the Milford Road and back to Te Anau for the night in the Lake View Holiday Park Hostel

The beauty of the trip starts as soon as you leave Te Anau on the road to the Sound, the famous Milford Road. This dead end, 120km double lane road, attracts over 250,000 visitors a year and with good reason. The lonely winded road cuts through the heart of Fiordland from the undulating farmland in Te Anau, into ever wilder mountainscapes finishing at the wharf of Milford Sound. Like no other place has the work of avalanches, earthquakes and rainwater carved out such a marvellous sculpture of mountains covered with mossy forests, waterfall trickles and glassy reflecting lakes.

Along the road there are various stops where you can park to appreciate the beauty of the place. We stopped along all the main points starting from the mirror lakes whose crystal clear water reflect the snow capped mountains like a mirror, to the chasm walk. In this 20 minute (return) walk you can see cascades of water flowing through the narrow chasm along the path of a river.

The first cruise on Milford Sound was a complete waste of time and money, the visibility was appalling, the rain was lashing, and the winds were blowing. The lonely planet recommends not to be put off by a downfall because if there's no rain then the waterfalls dry out. This is only correct while you can figure out where the waterfalls are, because with the heavy rain and low clouds some mountains weren't even visible. After taking some preliminary 'prove photos' I ended up drinking the complimentary coffee and chatting with the two Irish newcomers on the bus. They gave me some suggestions on what to do in Wellington, which proved helpful later on. I prefer to rely more on advice given by travellers I meet rather than from the guidebook, for some reason it feels more trustworthy.

The cruise on Milford sound takes about 1 ½ hours. By now the weather got worse and sleeping on the way up though Milford Road didn't classify as a deadly sin. We made our way back to the hostel, and as far as big hostels go the Lake View Holiday Park topped them all. The hostel looks like soldier's barracks in the way it's laid out, occupying a vast amount of land. There were so many cabins and divisions that in the three days I spent there I always got lost on my way to my room. Here we had single rooms for hostel prices but with so many rooms available it would have been a crime not to.

I spent the evening chatting, watching some TV and drinking coffee in the kitchen. Drinking coffee in the kitchen became a cult by now. I'd go there with my good friend Sheamus and we'd watch people cook, eavesdrop on conversation to collect some gossip fodder and watch some TV.

After the kitchen rush hour was over I 'prepared' another of my gourmet meals. This time it was pitta bread with anchovies. The anchovy bones kept tickling my throat so I got fed up of them pretty soon. I turned to dessert which consisted of a can of pineapple rings. These meals apart from having zero preparation time and need no utensils also don’t require any refrigeration which is handy when you're always on the go. [Refrigerators were available in every hostel but he couldn’t be bothered.] When preparing this meal I remembered one of my granny's war time snacks - white grapes with bread. I was eating all this while watching Jamie Oliver on TV, and I could see that envious look on his face.

View the complete Milford Sound Gallery here

Coming next: Doubtful Sound / Te Anau