Monday 31st December Doubtful Sound

New Year's Eve started grey and quite chilly but we were ready for our trip to Doubtful Sound and after a longish wait for our bus off we went to Manapouri to connect with the catamaran across Lake Manapouri to the landing stage by the power station.  The driver of our bus was a cheerful chap with lots of statistics at the ready.   The area we were travelling in was well known for its agricultural production, particularly livestock.     There are apparently 36 million sheep in New Zealand (down from circa 50 million).  Beef and dairy production is also big business and both lamb, beef and dairy products are exported to the UK and the rest of the EC.  Next comes deer.  On this trip, we have seen a lot of deer being farmed and apparently they are bound for Germany.   We are not sure whether there is much by way of a local market.  Restaurants do serve venison, but we have not been able to find it in the supermarkets.

After the shortish boat ride across Lake Manapouri, we were offloaded we boarded buses to cross the Wilmot pass (a very hilly,wooded road) to Deep Cove where we were to board our boat for the cruise around Doubtful Sound.

The weather worsened as the day progressed and I can only describe the Sound as Mean, Moody but Magnificent. Those of you who read our blog 2 years ago when we visited Milford Sound may remember that we had wonderful clear weather for that trip but today we saw Doubtful at its most normal weather. After all Fiordland  in the South Island of NZ is one of the wettest parts of the world.

 

Because of the rain we did see the waterfalls at their best and apparently only a handful are permanent waterfalls with the vast majority appearing only after heavy rainfall which of course is quite often.

On the way back up the Sound (technically a Fiord and more of that later) we were lucky to see a large pod of bottle nosed dolphins.

On our return we headed to the Fat Duck ( Te Anau's version and not related to Mr Blumenthal's restaurant at Bray!) for an excellent meal of normal NZ portions i.e. very large!

Apparently Doubtful Sound was so named by Captain Cook in 1770 when he was doubtful that he would be able to sail out of the Sound if he entered it as a result of the prevailing winds being westerlies. It is also inaccurate to call it a Sound and it is  in fact a Fiord.    The distinction, we were told, is that a Sound is created by river erosion whilst a Fiord is created by glacial erosion.

An excellent day and we headed back to hunker down in our campervan well protected from the heavy rain.