The Craig Chronicles: Day 14

We had a 7:40am check-in time for our cruise to Doubtful Sound. It started with a 45 minute cruise across Lake Manapouri which has alot of little islands in it that look like haystack rock with a forest on it. The lake is very deep.

After the cruise across the lake, we got off the boat and loaded onto a bus to ride a windy gravel road to the Sound. The road was built for the construction of the power station (more on that later). Because it is such a remote place, camps of men stayed there to work on the road and then build the power station. As we drove we saw beautiful green forests, water falls, etc but all the vegetation is actually growing on rock.

We stopped for this view of Doubtful Sound along the way.

After the bus ride, we loaded another boat and headed out. It is hard to describe and our pictures do not do it justice. They turned out a bit dark because of the clouds and the massive walls of rock that surround you but the sound was quite impressive. Very deep, dark water that is actually fresh water sitting on top of salt water. Impressive cliffs, cool vegetation, tons of rock formations. Lots of little inlets or fiords. It is so remote and peaceful. At one point, the captain turned off all the engines and asked everyone to be quiet so you could only here natural sounds

There is a seal colony at the end of the Sound.

We are approaching the Tasman Sea. It was very windy but not overly cold.

When we returned from our cruise, we loaded back in buses and headed to the power station which is NZ's greatest engineering feat. How could we pass this up, right? Some folks chose not to come along because you rode the bus deep underground down a long, dark, tunnel. The bus driver called it middle earth. They love them some Lord of the Ring references. Anyway the station takes water from the lake and pours it into the Sound. The company Matt worked for when he lived in NZ worked on the power station but he had never been here so he was very interested to see it.

The top of the power turbines which are apparently 5 stories tall.

After the boat ride back, it was still daylight so we decided to drive as far as we could on the Milford Highway (which was the road to Milford Sound that was closed due to mudslides) to the Key Summit hike. It was supposed to have a good view and a possibility to see Kia. By the time we reached the trailhead it was spitting rain and cloudy. As we hiked up the clouds dropped so we could see less and less. It was still a nice hike and good to get out and walk since we had not been very active that day.