Nov 10th & 11th – We arrived in Te Anau after a somewhat long drive from Queenstown. We had packed a picnic lunch but ended up eating our sandwich in the car since it started to rain just as we got set to have lunch. Fortunately that was the only rain we saw. Scenery along this route was quite different than what we had seen previously. There are very few trees in this area but large tussocks of red grass dot the landscape. Te Anau is a relatively small town, mostly geared to those who are travelling on to Milford Sound or Doubtful Sound.

After discussion with many folk along the way, we decided to take the trip to Doubtful Sound. Milford is much better known, of course, but requires a two hour road trip to get there and then the boat ride is only an hour long, following which you have a two hour bus trip back again. The Doubtful trip is a full day trip with additional options. Weather also plays into the consideration since the Milford trip is cancelled much more often than the Doubtful trip because of poor weather.

Weather turned out not to be an issue since the day dawned cool but sunny. The crew said it was the best day in the past three weeks. We were picked up at our B&B and driven out to Lake Manapouri where we boarded our first boat. After arriving on the other side we boarded another bus and were driven down through a 2km long tunnel to see the hydro electric power plant 200 metres below the lake surface. It was quite an interesting story of engineering feats that required 1800 workers and eight years to complete. A road had to be specially built to move all the construction equipment and the power station equipment, which arrived by barge from the mainland. After the tour we travelled on this road to Deep Cove where we boarded the boat to tour Doubtful Sound.

The scenery was very typical of fiords with sheer cliffs on both sides, waterfalls galore, inlets (called arms) that go off the main channel, and then eventually access to the sea. While we were travelling out to the Tasman Sea, we found a pod of dolphins that enjoy the slightly warmer water of the fiord. The morning boat tour saw humpback whales out in the sea, but we weren’t so lucky. We did, however, see a seal colony and then on the way back in two New Zealand crested penguins paid a visit. In one of the arms, our boat pulled right up under a rock ledge and we were able to fill a cup with “99.9 percent pure” water dripping off the ledge.

It was a great day but we were pretty tired when we finally got back to our B&B about 6:30pm. We invited a Swiss lady, from our B&B, who is travelling alone to join us at the local pizzeria for dinner and then chatted with our hosts and other guests until bed time. Cliff, our host, was an international rower and umpire – we enjoyed his many stories.