Kiwi Discoveries - Mitre Peak website
Milford Sound is one of the South Island must do’s! Such a beautiful place is an attraction that must be explored and a cruise with Kiwi Discoveries – Mitre Peak is a brilliant opportunity! A coach (bus) – cruise – coach option is $175 for adults and $120 for children with opportunities to fly back to Queenstown (if there are availabilities). Our group chose to do the coach – cruise – coach, meaning that we met the bus outside the YHA hostel in Queenstown at 6:30 ready for our 12-hour trip. Once everyone had been picked up from around Queenstown we were on our way along the edge of the beautiful Remarkables Range.
Milford Sound is one of the South Island must do’s! Such a beautiful place is an attraction that must be explored and a cruise with Kiwi Discoveries – Mitre Peak is a brilliant opportunity! A coach (bus) – cruise – coach option is $175 for adults and $120 for children with opportunities to fly back to Queenstown (if there are availabilities). Our group chose to do the coach – cruise – coach, meaning that we met the bus outside the YHA hostel in Queenstown at 6:30 ready for our 12-hour trip. Once everyone had been picked up from around Queenstown we were on our way along the edge of the beautiful Remarkables Range.

We rolled into our first break stop at Te Anau and forced our sleeping bodies to go for a wander around the town. The cruise has an option of buying lunch with the company and picking it up just before getting on the boat, but most of us decided to buy lunch at one of the cafes on our break. Throughout the Fiordland National Park we had two stops, to admire the great peaks and the mirror lake. We also went through the Homer Tunnel, just over a kilometer and a half, which takes us through to Milford sound. It was actually quite scary seeing how much rock and mass was going to be on top of our bus. I must say dark tunnels are not really my forte!
After five hours on the bus we boarded our Mitre Peak cruise at midday. We were lucky that the day was beautiful weather, no clouds in the sky and only a little bit of a breeze. However, we were a bit unlucky that it hadn’t rained in the lead up to our trip and the waterfalls were quite small, definitely disappointed with Mother Nature. But Milford Sound is still an incredibly stunning place! We saw seals lounging around, visible minerals in the rocks and it was fun when the boat bobbed on the ripples from the other boats we occasionally saw.
After about an hour of cruising up through
the wide gorge like rocks we finally came out at the sea. Suddenly it’s like there
is a moment of clarity, something clicked in my emotions and everything just
seemed to make sense in that second. It was tranquility, all the problems of
the world seemed to fade with the wind rushing past us, there was nothing to
care about, no college assignments due in by 5pm. It was just the wide-open
ocean that could take us anywhere we wanted, only five days to Australia and to
my family! We did this great loop and turned to go back through the gorge. The
cruise back is equally as beautiful and we were able to see a couple of big
waterfalls.

Check out this blog from Jucy Cruize, another great way to explore Milford Sound!