We set of at about 9am from the quay at Lake Mannipouri. It took about 1/2 hour to cross the lake which is beautiful even by NZ's high standards. I'm not sure my list of geographic features included islands but the lake has lots of them. They are small and thickly covered with local trees (this is deep NZ, not much of your foreign stuff here). Around the lake are thickly forested mountains from which the cloud was just lifting, it cleared by the end of the crossing.
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You land at a nameless pier and until 1950 you would have had to set off walking, for a full day if you were fit, through a hail of sandflies along thickly wooded tracks to Deep Cove, a tiny hamlet on Doubtful Sound. Actually Deep Cove is the only hamlet on or near the Sound. Today however life is softer and easier.
A hydro-electric power station was built at the end of lake at the end of the 40's, the water comes from the lake and drives the turbines before running out through a tunnel into Doubtful Sound. It is an incredible feat of engineering: the turbine hall is 1.5km down in solid rock, the run off is 30km, again through solid rock. The whole thing is now remote controlled from hundreds of miles away except for a few maintenance staff (who take a boat ride to and from Mannipouri each day - a big improvement on city commuting!). We descended (by bus) to the turbine room but, to be honest, one turbine looks much like another to me. I'm suitably impressed that they did it in the first place and it is a bit odd to feel that you are that far below ground but I don't think I'd want to work there. Apparently the rock is so solid they they don't notice earthquakes.
The important side effect of the power station is that the electricity company built a road from the station to Deep Cove so now tourists can skip the one day walk and go by bus which we did. Even in a bus you feel quite brave, it's not exactly a three lane highway. It is pretty though.
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As we went the driver talked about history, flora, fauna, eartquakes and weather. Even when he was edging around a bus going the other way and we were on the outside with several hundred feet of rock and scrub below us he chatted unperturbed. In due course we did safely reach Deep Cove and we boarded the next boat. It was a beautiful day. To put it in perspective, Deep Cove gets over 250" of rain a year, typically it rains two days out of three which must averages out at about 1" a day when it is raining. We were very lucky.
The boat idled down the sound (which is a fiord by the way, I'm told a 'sound' is a drowned river valley, a fiord a drowned glacial valley). The captain explored side channels, the mountains come down to the water so there would be little chance of getting ashore. There are occasional big scars without trees where earthquakes or storms have dislodged the more precarious vegetation. The sides are several hundred feet high with water cascading down every few hundred yards.
The mouth of the sound is shielded from the force of the sea by a line of rocks where fur seals were basking. Since coming on this trip I've seen a lot of seals and they must be one of the most accomplished animals at just lolling about. After sailing as close as we could we continued down a side channel where we were joined by a pod of
dolphins which jumped and raced the boat.
A few more pics, note the earthquake damage. It was only a couple of days old.
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And so, eventually back to Deep Cove, back up through the valley to the lake and then home. We ended our trip by walking along a little track beside the lake listening to the birds until we got back to our camp site. No more earthquakes, but after over eight hours of sun, water, boats, dolphins and seals I doubt if we'd have noticed the tea cups rattling.
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