The next day we set out on Route 96 northwards, heading into the wilds. This winding road leads to just one place: Milford Sound, 120km away. We passed coachloads of other tourists making the same pilgrimage, spilling out at the various spectacular viewpoints along the way. The weather was warm if overcast, but this only made the views more impressive, as distant peaks became only hazy shadows on the horizon.

At 100km the road began to head upwards towards the blank face of the end of the valley; huge slabs of granite were hemming us in on three sides. Then Hobart's tunnel appeared - a kilometre of roughly hewn unlit blackness cut through the mountainside. The slow, dark, descent seemed to last forever with the ponderous tour buses crawling down in front of us. Eventually we passed into the circle of light at the other end and looked upon another world. The twisting loose gravel path wound its way down to the valley floor at the head of the sound. Again, granite surrounded us and giant peaks loomed in the distance, swathed in tendrils of misty cloud. The light was cool, diffuse and mystical. This place is remote - electricity only exists here thanks to a pair of generators and the road is the only link to the rest of the world.

The next day we ventured out onto the sound itself on a guided kayak tour. From here we could see the mountains and valley walls more clearly. They were all clad in a thick green coat of tough spongy moss that clings tenuously to the slippery mountainsides while ferns and trees bury their roots into the moss to create a giant vertical forest. The interlocking structure of roots is the only thing holding the whole thing up and sometimes, when everything becomes just too waterlogged, something gives way and huge chunks of forest tear, slip and crash into the waters below. Barren patches on the mountainside bear testament to such disasters.

We headed across the lake, trying to escape the sandfly - a New Zealand biting insect that, unlike the mosquito, lets you know when it's making a meal of you. A lone fur seal sat on a rock and eyed us suspiciously as we clustered around taking photos. The dolphins alas, were all out of town. Afterwards, we squelched back to our car and began the journey home. It was raining harder by then, just some of Milford's seven metres of annual rainfall. As we crawled our cautious way up the slippery gravel incline that led back to Hobart's tunnel, we noticed that the rock had turned into polished black marble laced with threads of white: the water gushing down from the mountain tops in hundreds of rivulets and waterfalls. Spectacular, but cold and inhospitable. We chugged through the blackness of the tunnel once more and out into the other side, a land where the sun shone on the golden grasslands, and the wind blew through the autumnal trees. We had returned to the real world.