Doubtlessly Beautiful Doubtful Sound

After one of his long voyages to the South Pacific, Captain Cook's crew craved respite and urged Cook to take shelter in a narrow bay they spied along the South Island's southwest coast.  But Cook declined the request, because he "doubted" the prevailing winds would allow them to sail back out.  Or so the story goes.

Doubtful Sound is a bit further south in Fjordland from the more famous Milford Sound (both labeled as "sounds" on early maps, rather than their true formation, "fjord," but the mistaken identity stuck), which I had been on with my friend Jim in 1981.  Fjordland is known for its rain and its dramatic sea-to-peak landscapes found in only a few other places on earth - Alaska, Norway, and Chile, as far as I know. 

It's a popular tourist destination, so we tried to get a berth on an overnight boat trip a number of months before we left for Aotearoa ... it wasn't easy! We kept checking the online booking system, which showed nothing available for the time interval we would be in the area. Desperate, we made an overseas call (isn't that a quaint term!) and, with a human voice on the other end, were able to reserve the last berth, a family cabin with four bunks and its own bathroom.  Whew!

The trip is actually a 3-part tour: a water taxi across Lake Manapouri to a bus that takes you over 2100 foot Wilmot Pass and down to the fjord, there to board the three-masted "Fjordland Navigator."  We stayed in the little hamlet of Manapouri the night before, enjoying an afternoon swim in the lake.  

At the west end of the lake is a pretty amazing engineering structure.  In the late 1960s, the government decided to build a hydro-electric generating station, but not your normal "dam a river and run its water over turbines."  No, they drilled a vertical 200 meter shaft in the mountain at the lake's west end down which lake water drops and passes through turbines, and then a 10 km tunnel takes the water out to the sea.

The sailing adventure was spectacular, in part because we lucked out with the weather. It was partly sunny and dry when we sailed out the fjord to its mouth and into the open waters of the Tasman Sea. That gave us great views of the various islands and peaks as well as a colony of fur seals.  We were also able to kayak for a few hours in the sheltered bay where the ship anchored for the night. 

But then that night it started rain and did so through the next morning.  Bad news? No!  Because the steep mountain sides are basically rock with a very thin layer of soil and vegetation, the rain doesn't soak in at all, but instead creates hundreds of gushing, sometimes roaring waterfalls.  You can watch videos here and here, and enjoy the photos below: 

Swimming Lake Manapouri

The view looking west as the water taxi took us across the lake

Our first look at Doubtful Sound from Wilmot Pass

 

Our 24-hour home

Looking back into the fjord from its mouth, what Captain Cook might have seen

Things were a bit more exciting when we reached the Tasman Sea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Just to dramatize the point - we passed this creek on the bus the first day of the tour...

And this is the same creek the next day after the rains ... wow!