Milford Sound (Day Trip)

Milford Sound (Piopiotahi) is New Zealand's most iconic natural wonder — a 15-kilometre glacier-carved fiord in Fiordland National Park whose sheer cliffs rise 1,200 metres directly from the dark water, where waterfalls cascade hundreds of metres from clouds hanging between the peaks, and where the 1,692-metre Mitre Peak rises straight out of the sea. Rudyard Kipling called it 'the eighth wonder of the world.'

From Queenstown, the Milford Sound day trip is a 12-hour affair — 4 hours' drive each way through the Te Anau basin and the Homer Tunnel, plus a 2-hour boat cruise on the fiord. Some visitors fly in (30-minute scenic flight each way plus the cruise) or do a combo (coach one way, fly the other). The cruise passes the 151-metre Stirling Falls and the 146-metre Bowen Falls (both permanent; in wet weather dozens of additional temporary falls appear). Fiordland gets 7 metres of rainfall per year — expect rain and prepare for it.