Private Milford Sound Scenic Tour: Fjords, Waterfalls and Views

Overview

A private tour for your group only, genuinely customizable, real stops at Lake Wakatipu, Te Anau, Mirror Lakes, the Homer Tunnel, and Milford Sound.

This is a private tour for your group only, genuinely customizable with flexible pacing. Real stops include Lake Wakatipu, Te Anau, Mirror Lakes, Eglinton Valley, Knobs Flat, the Homer Tunnel, The Chasm, and Milford Sound, with an optional cruise beneath Mitre Peak.

Highlights

• Genuinely Customizable Real flexible pacing and photo stops.
• The Real Homer Tunnel Genuine dramatic mountain passage.
• Private, Full Day 11 hours, just your group.

What Stops Does This Tour Make?

A popular starting point — every Voyzo itinerary is fully customizable, so we'll shape the order and stops around your group.

Important Information

Frequently Asked Questions

About This Tour

A private tour for your group only, genuinely customizable, real stops at Lake Wakatipu, Te Anau, Mirror Lakes, the Homer Tunnel, and Milford Sound. This is a private tour for your group only, genuinely customizable with flexible pacing. Real stops include Lake Wakatipu, Te Anau, Mirror Lakes, Eglinton Valley, Knobs Flat, the Homer Tunnel, The Chasm, and Milford Sound, with an optional cruise beneath Mitre Peak.

Milford Sound isn't actually a sound at all — a sound is carved by a river, while Milford Sound is a true fiord, cut by repeated glaciations over hundreds of thousands of years. The last ice retreated from this particular valley roughly 16,000 years ago, leaving behind the sheer rock walls that now rise more than 1,200 metres straight out of the water on either side. That same glacial carving explains why the drive in feels dramatic well before you reach the water: the Eglinton Valley, which this tour follows for much of the way, is a classic flat-floored, U-shaped glacial valley rather than the V-shaped valley a river alone would have cut.

Because this tour is genuinely flexible, you get to set your own pace through the string of real stops along the way rather than being locked to someone else's schedule — Lake Wakatipu, Te Anau, Mirror Lakes, the Eglinton Valley, Knobs Flat, and the Homer Tunnel before the final descent to Milford Sound itself. At Mirror Lakes, the reflection isn't just a figure of speech: on a calm day, Mount Eglinton and the Earl Mountains genuinely mirror in the still water, and there's a small sign mounted just above the surface that's deliberately printed backwards so it reads correctly in its own reflection.

Milford Sound averages around 6,412 millimetres of rain a year, making it one of the wettest inhabited places in New Zealand and one of the wettest on Earth — and that's part of why having a flexible, unhurried itinerary actually works in your favour here. Rain feeds dozens of temporary waterfalls that pour straight off the cliff faces and vanish again within hours, on top of the two permanent falls, so a changeable sky can make for a more dramatic day rather than a disappointing one. Along the way, The Chasm is worth the short stop it gets on this tour: the Cleddau River has spent centuries swirling boulders around in the same spots, carving smooth, almost sculpted holes straight through solid rock.

If you take the optional cruise, you'll pass directly beneath Mitre Peak, which rises 1,692 metres above the water right at the sound's edge and is one of the most photographed peaks in New Zealand precisely because it rises almost straight up from sea level with no foothills to soften the scale.