Doubtful Sound


Valentine's Day brings an early start, as we are driving the 170km from our hotel to Manapouri to join a cruise that will take us across the lake by boat, then by coach across a mountain pass to a cruise on one of fjords - Doubtful Sound. 

The day has started in bright sunshine and the drive to Manapouri is absolutely beautiful. As we cross the lake on the first boat trip, sunshine glinting off the water, the mist closes in and we are treated to what we are assured is Doubtful Sound's usual weather. Rain!!

Once on Doubtful Sound itself we travel its whole length out into the Tasman Sea to visit a seal colony living on one of the rocky outposts along this shoreline and then back through this channel carved out by glacial erosion over countless millenia.   

The mist is very atmospheric, giving the towering rock faces on either side an eerie mysterious brooding quality.  Countless waterfalls seem almost to flow from the sky into the dark waters, over 400m deep at the deepest point in the Sound.  Over 8 metres of rain falls here every year and it rains two days out of three. The hundreds of different varieties of moss that cling to every rock face suffer sunburn and blacken if they see too much sun. Very few patches are black!

The mist lifts a little on the return journey through the Sound and the features of this amazing place become easier to appreciate. The way the forests cling to the almost vertical rock surfaces is miraculous as in most places there is less than three inches of soil. 



As we approach the end of our voyage, our Captain announces the imminent closure of the ship' toilets, so I reluctantly join the queue of aged incontinents waiting for one of the three unisex cubicles. Pot luck determines which one you're going to get. Will I follow the one whose bowels have been deeply disturbed by the motion of the boat or will I be more fortunate?  As luck would have it I follow a person somewhat more advanced in years than I am whose only problem turned out to be his memory - he forgot to flush!

The return coach trip through the pass provides slightly better views than did the journey down, as the mist has begun to lift. 

Before we re-board the boat that will take us back across Lake Manapouri, we are going to be driven 2km underground to the hydro-electric generating station machine hall on the same 40 seat coach that has driven us back from Doubtful.  The coach pauses at the dock side to allow those who don't want to go underground to get off. A suprising number disembark, including quite a few of the older passengers. Perhaps they feel they'll be permanently underground before too long so not too keen on the idea of a preview!!

Manapouri power station is amazing. Only the distribution pylons above ground betray its location. The 2km road to the machine hall is just that - a 33ft wide road hewn from the granite and descending over 270m into a vast underground cavern in which the coach has little trouble turning round. 

Seven huge turbines in a room larger than a football field have the capacity to produce 840 megawatts - enough to meet the needs of the whole of South Island's population if need be, though much of its output powers an aluminum smelting plant 100 miles away.

The weather on the return voyage across the lake shows different features as the sun strikes the forested peaks from different angles. This is an amazing part of the world. It's just slightly disappointing that Doubtful Sound was quite so gloomy and overcast.

Anyway it's off to Te Anau next for a trip to the Glow Worm Caves. Te Anau is about 20 minutes further into the wilderness than we are now, but the underground caverns lit by thousands of glow-worms should be fascinating. 

If such a thing is possible we're becoming 'sceneried out'. Everywhere is stunning, in sun, in cloud, in mist and now completely in the dark. After another scenic boat trip on Lake Te Anau, we are led in groups of 12 through a very low entrance tunnel into the cave system. The roar of water is deafening and the waterfalls and rushing river that have carved out this cave system over the last 12,000 years are spectacular (that word again!). After two hundred yards of craggy limestone tunnel, we are seated inside a small boat that is pulled deeper into the cave system by our guide hauling on a chain attached to the roof of the cavern. We are in darkness and as our eyes get used to the dark, we can see them - thousands of tiny pinpoints of light, each one a 3cm long glow worm dangling dozens of sticky silky threads to catch insects. The brighter each light, the hungrier the glow worm apparenty. Somehow, we had been anticipating something even more spectacular - millions of glow worms rather than thousands.  Perhaps that's just 'scenic overload'. 

It's now well after 9:00pm and we've had a very full day. Our bed for the night is the Te Anau lodge. We had time to check in just before this last excursion and it looks peaceful and very welcoming. 

Happy Valentine's day. Ours is over as yours is about to begin. Tomorrow, another adventure, more scenery....good night. 

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