Thursday 6th December

The south west region of South Island is called Fiordland. We were due to take an all day trip to the most northerly fiord, Milford Sound. However, the road was impassable. Luckily we were able to transfer to a tour visiting a different fiord, Doubtful Sound. This is more or less in the centre of the 14 fiords. Captain Cook passed the entrance in1770 but never entered as he was 'doubtful' whether he would be able to manoeuvre his ship out once it had entered. Our journey involved a two hour coach trip and then a 45 minute fast boat ride along Lake Manapouri. The Lake is high above sea level and a tunnel dropping 173 metres down to Doubtful Sound provides the head of pressure for an underground power station generating 14% of New Zealand's electricity. A road through the dense rainforest over Wilmot Pass to Deep Cove was constructed to get equipment to the power station and that was our route to the Sound. Our three hour cruise took us through a spectacular steep sided gorge. The cloud lay low and water boiled off the mountain sides in living, twisting, leaping, foaming ribbons pulsating with energy. The hills could have been populated with trolls, dwarfs and hobbits. The cruise was notable for the large number of Asian tourists, many of whom never seemed to look out at the scenery but stared at their phones, played games or simply slept. We retraced our route and arrived back damp and tired. Our clothes were laid out to dry in front of our fire (yes our room did have one). After a shower and supper we were ready to go to bed.