Day 21 Te Anau to Doubtful Sound

After a wonderful sunrise cool morning, light breakfast and chat it was time to depart for our big adventure day to Doubtful Sound. Drove into Te Anau to catch the bus to Lake Manapouri.  Collected many international travellers en-route and the boat was virtually booked out.

Our trip across Lake Manapouri was choppy and extremely windy.  We chose to sit upstairs in the open and let me tell you, it was freezing and we were totally windblown. Made it across the lake which took quite some time, then to be greeted by a bus that was going to traverse an equally wild road.  This morning it was so foggy in parts that visibility was quite limited.  Luckily our bus driver was more than capable.  Doubtful Sound was blanketed in a thick layer of cloud, yet we managed to catch a glimpse of some of the waterway from the bus.

The next boat we took was to be our sanction for the next 3 hours of the most spectacular rugged pristine landscape.  Managed to capture some fur seals on rock formations.  Most of course were asleep.  Penguins were pretty elusive to be photographed, though a couple were seen.  Went as far as the start of the Tasman Sea and the weather was pretty wild.  Wind gusts around 50knots and reckon the chill factor was around 7C.

Our return was a little calmer with the wind now behind us.  Gee, I have never been so wind-blown, nor cold at times.

Our bus trip on our return was uneventful and we stopped to go underground to view the Manapouri hydro power station 200 metres below the surface of lake Manapouri and had to drive 2.5kms through a tunnel to reach the station.  Not a comforting thought, but I did brave it and can now tick that off the bucket list!

If you have a look at the last image of the google map – our GPS plotter lost the plot when we went underground!  It had the lines going to the south pole…..I think that is a hoot.

More dialogue later.  We are beat after such a long day.