Sights and Sounds Sunday 1/27/08

Today is another sound. Named "Doubtful" by Captain Cook because he thought if he went in with prevailing winds blowing straight down the sound, it would be doubtful that he could get back out, it was later discovered that it opened so wide once inside that there was plenty of room to maneuver a ship under sail. There are 14 "sounds" in Fiordland which in fact are really fiords (hence Fiordland) because they are created from glacial rather than river erosion. Doubtful Sound is the second largest and many times larger that Milford from the day before.

Our B&B, Te Anau Lodge, was a convent in a previous life and was taken apart and moved to this location by some previous owner. Matt and Chloe bought the place because it sounded like a good idea at the time (sounds familiar) and are so far enjoying entrepreneurship. Our breakfast is served in the chapel and Mary orders something sensible while John decides on what Matt refers to as the "Mother Superior." Our breakfast partners are a young couple from Paris, and she says that she loves visiting America and Americans because they are so uninhibited. We suspect that is a rare point of view in her country.

We are picked up by bus at 8:30, gather up some fellow travelers, and drive about a half hour south to Manipouri. Off the bus and onto a tour boat that travels across Lake Manipouri which takes another 50 minutes and we are moving pretty fast. We are seated with an English couple from Devon who tell us that they like chatting with Americans because their own countrymen are too reserved to make friends easily. The world is upside down this morning (but then again we are in the Southern Hemisphere). Now, off the boat and back onto a bus, which had been brought over here by barge, and we travel on a dirt track through woods and over a mountain pass for another hour to reach our deep water anchorage where our final tour boat is waiting.

Doubtful is much longer and wider than Milford so you don’t have the same effect of being at the bottom of a "V" but the overall feel of the place is of course astounding. We head out towards the Tasman which lies 25 miles (40km) away and we are traveling at 25mph so we will have an hour out, an hour back, and an hour of poking around on our 3-hour tour. We don’t see Gilligan, but think we spot Lovey and Thurston Howell.

More of the same. Waterfalls, spectacular rock formations, fur seals hanging on the rocks, and today we are joined by a pod of dolphins who put on a leaping show for us while we turn off our engines to enjoy their act. It was like "cue the fish!" It is another perfectly clear day and again our guides tells us that the mountains are like middle-aged people—they look a lot better with a little something wrapped around them, but we are happy with the blue skies and sunshine. Again, we can’t do it justice so won’t try.

On the way back we stop at the Manipouri power station on the Doubtful side of the lake, which is surprisingly interesting. Our bus drives straight into the mountain on the side of the lake and we descend 1.5 kilometers down below the level of the lake. The water is dropped through some specially drilled shafts and cranks seven very big generators designed to power an aluminum smelting plant in Kawai, about 50 miles south while feeding a little leftover dribble into the national grid.

Now it is a pleasantly warm afternoon for the ride back across Lake Manipouri to our bus and back to Te Anau. There are a lot of drifty eyelids after hours on the water with sunshine through the window. There is a private party going on at a college building next to our B&B and the band is cranking a little Van Morrison as we have a post-tour cocktail and update Josie, our resident black lab, on the activities of our day. We decide a little pasta will make up for the Mother Superior breakfast so John has the Bolognese (again) and Mary the smoked salmon-spinach (again) at a local Italian where all the waiters are all "prego, prego" and "molto bene" but otherwise crappy at their jobs. There is another great sunset as we walk back "home" where we grab another shared cake and glass of red wine and listen to Van Morrison. The band has obviously restarted their play list so should be done soon.

No Newspaper today

Milford Saturday 1/26/08

We have referred to our Kiwi coach Bryce in previous posts, and we won’t do it much anymore, but, this is his day. When he first reviewed our itinerary, this day had a late wakeup followed by a leisurely lunch and a relaxing 3-hour drive to Te Anau for the night. He suggested that we change that to get up and be in the car before sunrise, drive 5 hours to Milford Sound, take the boat cruise, and then drive another two hours back to Te Anau for the night. We tried to explain that didn’t seem like our preferred mode of travel. He said’ "You’re lazy, stupid, fat Americans if you can’t drag your sorry arses out of bed in the morning for the experience of a lifetime" or something like that.

After a 4:30 alarm we dragged our sorry arses out of bed, had a bite of breakfast left in our room the night before, and we are on the road at 6:00 sharp with a couple words for Bryce. Now, as we start around the east leg of the lake and turn south we are starting to get a little sun reflecting off the tops of the mountains around us while the full moon is still up behind us. The road south winds around another leg of the lake and the sun is appearing on the horizon as we travel through some green valleys that are dotted with mist and thousands of grazing sheep. We turn back west and there is a line of clouds to our left and sunshine to our right and we seem to be traveling right along a straight line separating the two. It is a unique perspective and we feel like we are in a special effects experiment.

We arrived in Te Anau at 8:00, an hour ahead of schedule, where we grab a coffee and bathroom break. It is about 60-degrees with bright blue skies as we look out at Lake Te Anau and sip a long black. Back on the road to Milford we parallel the lake for about 20 miles and then start heading up past lakes and rivers, always with the mountains as a backdrop with sun shining through patches of morning mist. The valley becomes more and more narrow with the mountains closing in from both sides as well as straight ahead. If you ever feel a need for insignificance in your life, this is the drive for you. A few decades ago some intrepid engineers punched a hole through the mountain leading to Milford sound to open the area to fat Americans. The tunnel is one-way so you wait up to 15 minutes for your green light to pass through. The parking area on the Te Anau side of the tunnel is populated by the Kea bird which is a mountain parrot said to have the curiosity and intelligence of a 3-year old and has been known to unzip camera cases and unsnap purses to swipe whatever it can. We have an intimate relationship with a certain 3-year old so we decide we can afford to pass on these guys.

Once through the tunnel we started a twisty carnival ride down the mountain zooming out to the edge of the cliff and curling back into the downhill switch back. We hadn't seen the water yet but you can see the valley heading out to what must be the Tasman Sea. We are accompanied on the trip down by roaring rivers and waterfalls. We get to the visitor's center just as the 9:55 tour is leaving so we book an 11:25 trip on Mitre Peak tours that was recommended by one of our fellow travelers in Q'town. This is a deep water harbor at the eastern tip of the sound and there are a half dozen tour boats lined up of varying sizes. We picked our's because it is a smaller boat and goes places that the bigger ones can't. We nibble some of our supplies we purchased yesterday, do a woodsy nature walk, and get on board at 11:15. There is nothing we can say to describe the next couple hours. Straight up cliifs, waterfalls that seem to be coming right out of the sky, 1000 foot deep water that is fresh on top and salt on the bottom, fur seals basking in the sun, sailing under one of the waterfalls (John was a "hero" because he stayed outside; Mary was a "pussycat" because she did not), and venturing out into the Tasman where Captain Cook once anchored because he missed the entrance to the sound. Buy the DVD or catch it on travel channel because we do not have the talent to capture what Kipling called one of the true wonders of the natural world.

We stopped at the mirror lakes on our way back to Te Anau where the crystal clear waters are supposed to reflect the surrounding mountains (not so much) but we did watch ducks and trout swimming from top to bottom as clearly as if they were suspended in air. The scenery returning was so good that a local highway patrolman thought John should be reminded of his earthly responsibilities of driving the speed limit which will cost more than Mary might make with many more casino trips. When we checked in at Te Anau Lodge, our hosts Matt and Chloe (he from the North Island and she a London lass) decided that it was beer-o-clock and we gradually mellowed out from a very very big day. We walked the mile into town, ate at the recommended Redcliff Cafe (Mary, Scallop appetizer; John, the groper ((their term, not mine)) fish special served over a warm potato salad), and then headed back for some chocolate cake and red wine in the lounge at the Lodge.

Okay Bryce, you win. No, actually we won because we finally listened to your advice. It was one of our best-ever days and it turned out to be eerily like the description of your day doing the same thing. The guides said it is really good when it is a little cloudy and rainy, but we'll take this one, thank you very much.

No Newspaper today!