NZ Day 7 - Doubtful Sound

Sunday, 18 December 2022

On previous NZ trips I've always thought it would be good to visit Doubtful Sound - but it's a full day commitment and a fair bit of $$ to do it so it didn't really fit in.  But this time,  without the extra cost of Zali (sorry Zali), and with a few days between our big hikes, the stars aligned for us to do the boat-bus-boat-bus-boat trip.

The first part of the day a 1 hour cruise across Lake Manapouri - about 15 minutes drive from Te Anau. The clouds were hanging pretty low, so there weren't many views to see until we got into the bus which took us over Wilmot Pass - an unconnected road that takes hydro power station workers and tourists over to Deep Cove, on the other side of the range.

Once down at water level, we boarded a boat for a 3 hour cruise of doubtful sound. It was spectacular the whole day, but until the sun came out in patches in the afternoon the photos were a bit dreary.

Everything looked very Norwegian except for the fact that there weren't cute little summer houses dotted around on the rocks and impossibly steep hillsides. The only building we saw was this hut built below high water mark to avoid the national park restrictions.

We cruised right out to the Tasman Sea and saw seal colonies and some rougher weather before turning and exploring some of the narrow arms of the sound.

It was a long day, but really great.  After a day of sitting we arrived home a bit lethargic, but we managed to force ourselves out for a run on another flat section of the Kepler Track - it's simply too nice to not run on it!  

The thunderstorms which had been forecast for the past 3 days finally arrived so we were pretty wet when we finished.  We had to do a lightening quick turnaround to make it to our 7.45 pizza restaurant reservation which lived up to the high reviews we had seen.