Fiordland National Park

The Fiordland National Park, the largest by far of New Zealand's national parks, occupies an immense wilderness of rugged mountain country in the southwest of the South Island, with numerous fjords reaching far inland.

Information

There is a visitor center in Te Anau.

This is a region of deep fjords in the west, ramified lakes in the east and mountains covered with dense forests of evergreen southern beech. At the higher levels and on the summits grow long beard lichens and various mosses. It is also a region of very high rainfall (up to 6000 mm), which fuels its grandiose waterfalls and locally catastrophic avalanches in winter. The national park is bounded on the north by the Darran Mountains, which rise to 2700m at Mount Tutoko. In the east a number of large lakes form a transition to the drier grazing country of Southland. In the west the mountains fall steeply to the Tasman Sea, which is lashed by the roaring forties.

The longest fjords are (from south to north), Preservation Inlet, Dusky Sound, Doubtful Sound, George Sound and Milford Sound, which is the best known and most accessible of the fjords.

These narrow, deep inlets were originally valleys hewn out by glaciers, which were later drowned by the sea. On the eastern edge of the ridge of mountains that runs down the whole of the South Island the glaciers carved out a series of elongated lakes, of which Lake Te Anau is by far the largest. Others are Lake Manapouri, Lake Monowai, Lake Hauroko and Lake Poteriteri.