Cruisn' on Doubtful Sound

We headed out at 7am for a tour of Doubtful Sound.  The tour started on a bus, to a boat, to another bus to a long boat cruise of Doubtful Sound.  Doubtful Sound is a fiord like Milford Sound.

We knapped a bit on the bus ride there and then on the first boat--we knew we would see it all on the trip back.  Then before getting on the cruise of Doubtful Sound, we took a tour of the hydroelectric power plant.  It was very cool.  First we drove down deep into mountain.  The lake Manapouri, which we took the boat across, is high in the mountain is is perfect for a hydroelectric plant--they just needed to dig a whole in the mountain to let the water flow down to the ocean.  Originally they were going to build a dam to raise the level of the lake to join it with Te Anau but environmentalists pushed back.

This is the tunnel.

These are the generators.

We loved it.

This is Doubtful Sound from afar.

There is very little top soil so when it rains, waterfalls appear everywhere temporarily.  This is a permanent waterfall.

This is a temporary waterfall.

The cruise was amazing.

Parts of Jurassic Park were to be filmed here but they failed to get day without rain when the crew arrived.  It rains 200 days a year in Doubtful Sound.

The water looks strange--I think because the freshwater over salt water.

The Tasman sea is straight ahead.  We went right up to the edge but had to turn around as the water was very rough.

They pulled the boat right up to one of the waterfalls so you could touch it.  The boat was inches from the rock.

It was cold but the cocoa was delightful.

We saw dolphins swimming around.  They were doing a bunch of flips and putting on quite a show.  We failed to get pictures of the flips.

The cruise was beautiful.

This is a turbine from the hydroelectic power plant.

This is the outside of the power plant that we toured.  The water enters at the bottom.  This is on lake Manapouri, not Doubtful Sound.

We were moving very fast on Lake Manapouri.

After the tour, we headed on our drive from Te Anau to Queenstown.  We stopped so Jen could take some pictures of the sheep, but she kept on scaring them away.

And pictures of some cows.

We then arrived at our hotel in Queenstown.  We had grown to like the simpler accommodations we had in the other small towns.  This was place was a bit fancy for us.

We walked into town to eat at the famous Fergburger.  They were delicious.