Doubtful Sound

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The reason why I was in Queenstown, despite its very anti-camping policy was to take a day trip to Doubtful Sound. Although Queenstown isn't all that close to the Sound, it was as far south as I was planning on driving – I wasn't going to have time to visit anywhere else and there's only one road in and out. It seemed to be easier to pay a bus driver to do the work and leave me free to look at the scenery.

The south-west corner of New Zealand is known as Fiordland from the many, well, fjords that cut into the coastline – the result of glaciation. Far and away the most well known is Milford Sound, but what research I did (basically, reading my Lonely Planet book and talking to the i-Site staff) suggested that Doubtful Sound was actually better. Doubtful Sound is three times longer than Milford and has ten times the surface area. In addition, the day trip to Doubtful included a lake-crossing and a visit to a hydro-electric plant as well, and was a much shorter drive.

The bus picks people up at Queenstown and further down the line at Te Anau and at Lake Manapouri, but we were the first stop and we left at 7 o'clock, which is quite early for a holiday. Walking along to the Real Journeys office I passed this sign on a bar door (Kiwis tend to be direct):

Before getting to Doubtful Sound we had to get across Lake Manapouri – yet another beautiful New Zealand lake surrounded by mountains. At 444m, it is the second deepest lake in New Zealand (the deepest is Lake Hauroko at 462m)


Our destination was West Arm:

From here, we caught another bus across the Wilmot Pass to Deep Cove. There's only one way to West Arm which is across the lake, so the bus (and all the other vehicles, the buildings, the animals, the people, the food, etc.) came across on a barge.

As you can see, as we climbed up to the pass, we drove into a proper winter scene:

At a small lay-by on the road, we stopped to get our first look at Doubtful Sound itself:

(the Sound stretches from about the middle of the picture more or less straight up)

From the Wilmot Pass, we descended once again and joined our second boat of the day – the Patea Explorer - at Deep Cove. On the map at the top of the post, Doubtful Sound is the inlet leading north-west from Deep Cove.

The Sound has many side arms, branches and islands:

Although the Sound is a sea-inlet, there is so much rainfall here – over 8m (26') annually – that there is a layer of fresh water on top of the salt water which is fed by the myriad streams that flow off the mountains. The stream water picks up a great deal of tannin from the leaves on the forest floor so not only is the water fresh, it's also quite dark. This makes the Sound an almost unique habitat for wildlife – species normally only found at depth are much nearer the surface, hiding beneath the dark brown fresh water layer. Doubtful Sound is the wettest place in New Zealand and the 4th wettest in the world.

We came across some of the fauna almost immediately:


These bottle-nose dolphins live in the Sound and sometimes come out to look at the tourists. The boat we were on had room for 200 passengers but our tour had only 21 on board so we had plenty of room to lean over railings and take pictures. Although the scenery would be every bit as grand in the summer, I think adding another 179 people would have significantly altered the feel of the tour.

A little further on, and we found some more sea mammals. These guys know where it's safe:

The Sound was very calm, but as we approached the mouth, we began to notice the effects of the storm that had been blowing out on the Tasman Sea. It was good to get back inside the barrier islands and be able to walk about again easily. We got an idea, though, of how the Sound got its name. When Captain Cook first sailed past, in 1770, he had a major disagreement with Joseph Banks, his botanist (who, incidentally, was providing a substantial part of the funding for the voyage). Banks was determined to explore the inlet, but Cook realised that, with a square rigged ship and the prevailing westerly winds it would be highly doubtful that they could turn around and sail out again.

On the way back in, we passed some of those seals again – this time in the water (well almost in it):

There was yet more fabulous scenery to be seen:

The boat was, it seemed to me, almost new and, as well as the complimentary tea and coffee had a lovely little snack bar which served, amongst other things, seriously delicious hot chocolate:

Apart from having a varied selection of snacks, what struck me about the café was how cheap it was. I would not be at all surprised in the UK to have been charged about £5 for a good hot chocolate like that, especially on a boat in the middle of nowhere. Here it was less than £2. I met another Scot on the boat who was also travelling around New Zealand and we both ended up buying filled rolls and snacks on the boat to take home for supper.

At one point, we had pulled in to Hall Arm, one of the side arms of the Sound, and the crew switched off the engines. Suddenly we could hear the water rushing down the mountains and the birds singing. It was a magical experience.

All too soon we were back in Deep Cove and had to say farewell to the boat. We reboarded our bus and headed west again up through the Wilmot Pass. There was just time for one last photo of the Sound:

The road through the pass was built to take the construction traffic when Manapouri Power Station was built. At $2 per centimetre (about £2.25 per inch), it is the most expensive road in New Zealand. It is a private road, though the public are allowed to use it – assuming that they can get a car to it. Some of the signs have been altered:

The final attraction on the trip is the Lake Manapouri hydroelectric plant, completed in 1971 to provide power to an aluminium smelter. The plant was built entirely underground to preserve the beauty of the area. Water flows through tunnels from Lake Manapouri to Doubtful Sound, turning 7 turbines on its way. The station provides all the power required for the Aluminium smelter with a little left over for the general grid. The smelter uses as much power as all of the rest of the South Island put together.

Access to the station is along a 2km long vehicle tunnel which took us down to the visitor area.

There isn't a great deal to see – basically just the tops of the generators, but it's quite an impressive sight all the same.

There's a model of all the tunnels in the visitor centre at West Arm:

The long yellow tube spiralling around the outside is the access road. The vertical blue tunnels carry the water down from Lake Manapouri to the turbine hall (orange). After that, it drains through the blue tail race tunnels running across the bottom of the model.

Outside the visitor centre, this little chap was provoking much interest:

He's (she's?) a Kea – four times rarer than Kiwis (which are already quite rare) and a protected species. He wasn't about to believe anyone when told that there was nothing edible in that camera bag.

The only parts of the power station that are visible are the power lines themselves and the water inlet in Lake Manapouri:

The scenery was every bit as good on the way back as on the way out. Perhaps slightly better because the weather had improved slightly:

And we left the boat, where we joined it, at Manapouri:

The bus that had taken a larger party to Milford Sound was waiting at Manapouri and soon we were on our way back to Queenstown and to a very welcome bed!