Te Anau - Day 2

[david63]

Today was one of the highlights of this journey - the trip to Doubtful Sound.

Unfortunately the day did not start off well as the coach driver failed to pick us up as he had gone to the wrong motel! Anyway after a couple of phone calls a young lady came to take us to the catarmaran. On this trip you go on a coach to get the boat to get the bus that takes you to the boat on Doubtful Sound.

Now one thing to clear up is that this is not a "Sound" but a fijiord - dont ask as I too do not know what the difference is, but it got its name when Captain Cook was on his travels around this part of the world and decided that it "doubtgul that he would get his ship in there.

Once we had spent an hout crossing the lake (they have some mighty big lakes in these parts) we boarded the buses that would take us through the forsest to the Sound. Roumour has it that this is (was?) the most expensive road built in New Zealand! On the drive the driver was giving a running comentary about the flora and forna that was around and also pointed out the trees that inspired Peter Jackson fot the "Talking trees" in LOTR.

Eventually we arrived at the Sound and boarded the catarmaran that was to take us on our three hour trip through Doubtful Sound and out to the Tasman Sea. Probably due to the wind direction and the speed at which we were going there was mighty cold wind in our faces but being true Brits we stuck it out on deck.

As I said before there is a shortage of rain in the area which meant that most of the waterfalls that feed into the Sound were dry and that probably meant that we did not see the Sound at its best - but nontheless there was some spectacular scenery along the way. Because the conditions were so calm once we reached the Tasman Sea we were ablw to actually go out into it where we saw a colony of seals basking on the rocks.

The journey back was much less windy, in fact most of the time we had the sun blazing down on us. There was a pod of dolphins in the area and they "came to have a look at us" and we also saw a cormorant above.

Once we arrived back it was then on the bus to get the other catarmaran to get the bus back to the motel.

All in all an excellent and memorable day's trip and one that i would thoroughly recommend.




Source: http://pear-tree.org.uk/blog/index.php? ... Day-2.html

[JoanneB]

According to Wikipedia (so it must be true)

In geography, a sound is a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, and wider than a fjord; or a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land (see also strait).

We are lucky enough to have done both Doubtful and Milford and they are great days out

[Quizzical Bob]

According to Wikipedia (so it must be true)

In geography, a sound is a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, and wider than a fjord; or a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land (see also strait).

We are lucky enough to have done both Doubtful and Milford and they are great days out

Fjords are in Norway (and Denmark but those are different). Fjord just means 'way' or 'route' because that's the way the the Vikings travelled. I don't think there were many Vikings in New Zealand.

We have done both but preferred Doubtful to Milford. Probably because the weather was better and there were a lot less flies.