We splurged on an overnight cruise to Milford Sound, a fiord on South Island’s western coast that is one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist attractions and was considered the eighth wonder of the world by Rudyard Kipling.

Milford Sound, known as the wettest inhabited place in New Zealand and one of the soggiest in the world, has a mean annual rainfall of 252 inches a year. To put it in perspective, London, which has always appeared to be a pretty rainy place, gets only 23 inches a year! Milford is also one of the smallest of South Island’s fiords, with a surface area of only 9.7 square miles. The photo above shows the iconic Mitre peak, named for its resemblance to a bishop’s mitre. Look for the cruise ship in the center of the photo and you will get an idea of the scale of the peaks around Milford Sound.

We started our tour in the beautiful town of Te Anau, known as the gateway to Fiordland National Park and Milford Sound.

It sits on a lake and is a favorite holiday destination for Kiwis. It’s also the closest town to Milford Sound.

A mini-bus owned by the boat company drove us into Fiordland National Park, a backdrop to scenes in many movies, including the Lord of the Rings.

And the whole drive was filled with many breathtaking alpine views.

After reaching the Sound, we boarded the Milford Mariner, a 70 passenger cruise ship for our first ever overnight cruise.

The afternoon couldn’t have been nicer, weather-wise …

… and we actually enjoyed plenty of sunshine cruising around the Sound. But then it rained overnight, and we woke to a misty morning.

The tour company brochures state that Milford Sound is best experienced in rainy weather. We assumed they were saying that as a cover up for the fact that it does rain there a lot, but we found out that there’s actually truth to what they said — it really does make for a wonderful experience …

… because of the hundreds of waterfalls that we saw streaming down the mountains that hadn’t been there the day before.

The captain took the boat really close to one of the falls so that we could appreciate the sheer force of the water cascading down.

While some of the passengers braved the wet to get this amazing shot, we stayed safely under cover!

And we considered ourselves very lucky to have gone when we did.

A week later, heavy rains caused flooding and landslides in the area and closed the only road to the Sound, trapping hundreds of tourists for several days until they could be rescued by helicopter. Cruise ships had to bypass Milford Sound as they were prevented from entering the fiord because of debris in the water and, as of today, bus tours have still not resumed.