First off lets set the record straight that technically it should be Milford and Doubtful Fiords rather than Sound but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The Welsh explorer John Lort Stokes misnamed it in 1851 but the whole area was renamed Fiordland so all is good I guess.
I was lucky enough to be able to paddle both Milford and Doubtful ‘Sound’ and although they were two very different trips both were awesome.
Doubtful Sound was definitely harder work to get on the water. You start with a bus to a boat, you then take the boat across Lake Manapouri and it is time to get wet suited up. You then get onto a bus to get yourself to Doubtful Sound with a rather cool view point along the way.
Milford and Doubtful get over 23 feet of rainfall each year and are the wettest inhabited place on the planet and it lived up to the hype by the time we made it down to the water and got into our waterproofs (on top of wetsuits!).
The waterfalls really are spectacular and given how much it was raining and how wet we were we ended up just kayaking through some of the smaller falls as we hugged the coastline.
And before we repeated the bus, boat, bus trip in reverse to get back we took yet another boat ride but it was a lot quicker than paddling back!
Doubtful Sound is a remote and quiet place and our hardy group had the place to ourselves which was in contrast to the much easier to get to Milford Sound were I paddled next. Whilst it was busy in Milford Sound once we paddled out and away from the hustle and bustle of the other trips it was still an amazing experience.
The Milford Sounds trip was a much shorter trip that Doubtful and so short I hardly got any pics! But rather than resort to stock pictures of Milford Sound I will hold off as we will be coming back on the Seabourn cruise in a few weeks!
