One of the traditions in our family is that Tom is a sun god. For years of Maine vacations, whatever the weather was like in his absence, when Tom arrived the clouds parted. It looks like the sun-god mojo has returned. It rains two days out of three in Milford Sound, but we had two days of spectacular weather there, and the rain closed in behind us as we left.

The southwest coast of New Zealand’s South Island looks just like Norway on a map. It comprises a huge national park called Fiordland, which is for the most part accessible only by air, boat or Shank’s Mare.

The only fiord that can be reached by car is Milford Sound. (The name is a misnomer, as a sound is carved by a river rather than by a glacier. Milford Sound is indeed a fiord. Store that bit of trivia in a corner of your brain – never know when it might come in handy.) The car trip to the Sound is an adventure in itself, full of narrow twisty bits and a tunnel that could double as Shelob’s Lair. The tunnel was carved through a mountain in the 1930s with picks and shovels. Before they broke through, the mail delivery involved a climb up a sheer rock face with the aid of a rope and a series of pitons driven into the rock for footholds. It made the Pony Express look like a bunch of wimps.

The Sound is one of the iconic New Zealand landscapes. The walls are lined with waterfalls, some fed by glaciers on the surrounding mountains, others temporary trickles fed by the nearly constant rains. A friend who saw it in the pouring rain said it was spectacular, with hundreds of waterfalls. We were just as happy to have fewer waterfalls and sun.