New Zealand 8 - Doubtful Sound

When you are on a trip, you are pretty much at the mercy of the weather. You only have a defined amount of time to see things, regardless of whether the weather cooperates or not. On the day we went to Doubtful Sound, this is how the day started:



Not very promising! But you can't let the weather keep you from doing things. So to get to Doubtful Sound, you take a boat across Lake Manapouri (from the dock in the picture above). We did get a few photos with both of us in them and below is a photo of us crossing Lake Manapouri.

Once we got across the lake, a bus picked us up and drove us up and over a mountain through rain and fog. We came back down on the western side of the mountain and took a much larger boat to cruise Doubtful Sound. Doubtful Sound is about ten times the side of Milford Sound, which is much more popular. It's hard to choose between them, as both are beautiful. You just cruise along on what seems to be a placid lake, watching the mountains rise up out of the lake and disappear into the fog and clouds overhead.

Since it was very rainy before our cruise, there were thousands of waterfalls cascading off the mountains into the Sound. When I say rainy, I mean RAINY! They do not measure their rainfall in "inches", they measure it in "meters". The Doubtful Sound area gets about 80 meters (250 feet!) of rain a year! Which results in waterfalls everywhere!

At one point the ship's captain pulled the boat into a secluded cove and turned off the motors. We just sat there, listening to the waterfalls. Everyone on the boat was absolutely silent, just enjoying the feeling of experiencing how this area must be when there's no one there.

More waterfalls.

To get a sense of scale of the mountains and the sound, in the picture below, that is not a small boat coming toward us. It's about a 35-foot cruiser.

We'll leave you with one last panorama shot of Doubtful Sound. It didn't quite match well at the water line in the middle of the picture, but it gives you an idea of what the sound looks like.

Thanks for checking in. For the next posting, we will go to Milford Sound, which is north of Doubtful Sound. It's the more popular destination for those who visit the area.