Thompson Sound, New Zealand

Fiordland National Park (sometimes spelled Fjordland) is much more than just Milford Sound, to say the least. It covers 2.6 million hectacres, or about 10% of New Zealand's land area.


When we cruised out of Milford Sound, we knew we'd be seeing even more of amazing Fiordland National Park after lunch.  To be clear, I'm not sure exactly which "Sound" we were in when we took the photos, and in fact I think they are mostly Milford Sound, because we took more photos in the morning, but the video below is definitely Thompson Sound.
When we had cruised in Northern Europe with family on Emerald Princess, we enjoyed the pub lunch in the Wheelhouse Bar, where we dined on traditional English dishes like cottage pie or fish and chips at no additional charge, unless we wanted a traditional Guinness or some other beverage. We were happy to see a pub lunch listed for this day on Sapphire Princess, but instead of the Wheelhouse, which has a sort of Irish pub by the ocean kind of feel, they held it in Club Fusion, which contrary to its name has a definite cowboy theme. It wasn't quite the same atmosphere, but the lunch was good.

After lunch, I changed into my swim trunks so that I could be taking a hot tub when we arrived at the next scenic fjords, which explains the robe I am wearing in the video. We cruised into Thompson Sound, was amazingly beautiful in ever direction, just as Milford Sound had been, only with better lighting under the bright afternoon sun.

When we had cruised into Milford Sound, we had turned around and cruised back, bringing each side of the sound to our side of the ship, so I erroneously assumed I could give more attention to the other side on our way out. In this case, we went back through an entirely different passageway, Doubtful Sound.


Inside the “V” formed by the two waterways is Secretary Island, where for the last few years environmental groups have been working to eradicate a cute, furry little creature called the stoat. Why would they have such an objective?


New Zealand's natural inhabitants tend to be birds of different sorts, and of course there is plenty of beautiful plant life. Immigrants from other continents sometimes want to bring things they loved back home to their new world, and some of these folks loved rabbits. In the 1830s, rabbits were introduced into New Zealand for food and sport. Of course, without any natural predators, rabbits multiplied like rabbits, only more so. This resulted in “rabbit plagues,” where rabbits would eat not only all the vegetables planted by farmers but all the vegetation of any kind, leading to soil erosion after rain.




















To correct this miscalculation, the descendants of the people who brought over the rabbits brought in stoats to eat the rabbits. This had some success, but since the stoats have no natural predators in New Zealand, they soon grew out of control too. Plus, stoats are strong swimmers, and they made it onto Secretary Island, wreaking havoc with the environment there by eating birds and their eggs. Stoats are considered the most dangerous threat to the survival of many birds, including New Zealand's national bird, the kiwi.