Cruise beneath Mitre Peak and Stirling Falls

A glacier-carved fiord running fifteen kilometres to the Tasman Sea, with rock walls rising more than a kilometre straight out of the water. Rudyard Kipling called it the eighth wonder of the world.

It is not a sound at all — a sound is a drowned river valley, and this was cut by ice. Mitre Peak rises 1,692 metres directly from the water, which makes it one of the highest sea cliffs anywhere. Stirling Falls drops 155 metres and boats will nose in close enough to soak the front deck.

The fiord has a permanent layer of fresh water sitting on the salt, stained dark by tannins from the forest. That layer cuts the light, so deep-water species live unusually close to the surface — black coral normally found far below grows here at diving depth.

Fiordland takes between six and eight metres of rain a year, and rain is not the day spoiled. When it falls, hundreds of temporary waterfalls appear down the rock walls at once, and most people who have seen it both ways prefer the wet version.