Monday, October 22nd
After the amazing round-trip to Milford Sound on Sunday we came back to our holiday park standard cabin/renovated container and packed an overnight bag for our cruise on Doubtful Sound. We didn’t need to check in for the cruise until noon, so we did some shopping and grabbed a coffee in Te Anau before the 20-minute drive to Manapouri,
Doubtful Sound, which is actually a fjord, is accessible only by boat from the Tasman Sea or via the Wilmot Pass Road. We started the journey on a boat across Lake Manapouri, because the Wilmot Pass Road can only be accessed on either end via boat.
This picture above is looking back at the town of Manapouri and the one below is a view of the Wilmot Pass from Lake Manapouri.
The road was built in the 60’s as part of a huge hydroelectric project but is now primarily used by tour buses or trucks hauling boats to access the sound. Our tour bus stopped near the top of Wilmot Pass where we got our first glimpse of Doubtful Sound. You can see some of the road heading to the Sound.
So after a 45-minute boat ride and a 45-minute bus ride we covered the nearly 50K from Manapouri to our cruise ship, the Fiord Navigator.
The ship has a max of 70 passengers and a variety of cabin options. We chose the “just the two of us” option and it was quite nice. There were 45 people on our trip including a very cute roughly 1 year old baby. Brave parents! The weather was just perfect; not typical for Doubtful Sound where they generally get rain more than 200 days a year.
After a group meeting with details about the trip and safety instructions we took off from Deep Cove, the innermost end of the Sound. Many of the steep mountains on either side of the fjord have peaks nearly a mile high, and there are a number of islands – from tiny rock outcroppings to the huge Secretary Island – in the Sound.
Our first stop was a cove where you could chose to kayak or join the nature guide on a small boat tour. We went for the latter and enjoyed hearing about the various plants that were growing on the mountains. The mountain faces of course have no soil on them but a a few types of moss manage to grow there and the mosses actually provide a bed for a variety of NZ native bush plants to grow. After the kayak/boat excursions a few young and hearty souls went swimming in the 11 degree C water. Brrr!
We then motored through some pretty rough water toward the Tasman Sea to see if we could get a look at fur seals (dime a dozen those guys) and the rare fiordland crested penguin. We hit pay dirt on both fronts.
We encountered two separate groups of the Fiordland Crested Penguins, seeing seven of them – four are this year’s chicks.
We anchored at the end of one of the arms of the fjord overnight. There was a bit of mist in the air on Tuesday morning and really low-hanging clouds over the mountains. It was beautifully eerie. After a few hours of cruising the captain brought the boat near shore, shut down the engines and generator and asked everyone to be completely quiet and still for 10 minutes to listen to sounds of the rain forest. With the mist and clouds the sound of streams and birds made it a magical experience.
A little more cruising and then the trip back over the mountain and across Lake Manapouri, back to the mainland.
