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Mark Moxon's Travel Writing

New Zealand: Milford

Bowen Falls, Milford
Bowen Falls, Milford

The next day, stiff and stretching, I struck camp, hopped into Zed and headed off to Milford Sound. Milford is the main tourist attraction in Fiordland, with its stunning fiord and huge cliffs rising almost vertically out of the water, up to heights of nearly 1700m: it's quite a sight. The drive to Milford is spectacular enough, with a dangerously winding road that's home to millions of breakneck tour coaches; the Homer Tunnel, which blasts its way through the mountains to get to the sea, is probably the scariest tunnel I've ever driven through. Barely wide enough to accommodate two cars side by side, it's pitch black, leaks frightening amounts of water, and the road surface is dodgy to say the least. Add the slope of the tunnel – sloping down towards the Milford end at quite a rate – and it's enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies, especially when you meet four oncoming tour buses in a row, as I did on my return. It's incredible that it isn't permanently blocked by accidents...