Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Sound? Doubtful
They call it Doubtful Sound, but they explained that it's actually a fiord, since it was created by a glacier instead of a river. Merriam-Webster online doesn't mention this distinction but they haven't been to New Zealand. The "Doubtful" part refers to Captain Cook's uncertainty as to its use for a harbor since the prevailing winds blow in and it's too narrow to tack out.
Yesterday we spent the entire day on a tour to Doubtful Sound. A short bus ride took us to Manapouri; an hour-long boat ride across Lake Manapouri took us to a section of road, where another bus took us over a steep pass to the end of the sound. Then we were on a boat for three hours cruising around the fiord and its various arms.
Once again, the weather was beautiful, and the fiord was calm. Even when we went out a mile or so into the Tasman Sea to get to a rock with a bunch of fur seals, the boat hardly pitched at all. On the other hand, apparently it snowed on the mountains around the fiord just last week. The guides on the boat kept encouraging us to take the picture quick because the clouds were expected to roll in at any moment, but they never did. The weather map shows a high pressure area parked in the Tasman Sea, just like it does on nice fall days in California. Doubtful Sound gets 220 days of rain per year so their apprehension is more urgent.
I was in front of two Americans on the bus who wouldn't shut up about all the extreme stuff they were going to do, skydiving and parabungeying and otherwise ignoring the landscape they were in. I could understand doing that in Las Vegas which is totally boring and nothing to look at but its prevalence in New Zealand seems hard to explain.
The fiord landscape is really pretty -- all these green steep mountains next to narrow waterways, covered with pine trees and tree ferns, at least up to the tree line.
On the way back there was a brief tour of the Manapouri power station, a hydroelectric station 220 meters underground. The bus drove down a winding 2 km road to get to the viewing platform above the machine room. We're all looking forward to the same tour of the Exxon National Wildlife Refuge Oil Refinery when the opportunity opens up. (The whole area was very nearly flooded for hydroelectric during the 1960's, but New Zealand had an opposition party at the time, something there isn't in America, and voted them in rather than eradicate the whole landscape. Bechtel had to redesign the power station to use a bit less gravitational acceleration. I'm sure that the next time it comes up, the World Bank will insist on a more efficent use of natural resources, judged by the only existing metric.)
Yesterday we spent the entire day on a tour to Doubtful Sound. A short bus ride took us to Manapouri; an hour-long boat ride across Lake Manapouri took us to a section of road, where another bus took us over a steep pass to the end of the sound. Then we were on a boat for three hours cruising around the fiord and its various arms.
Once again, the weather was beautiful, and the fiord was calm. Even when we went out a mile or so into the Tasman Sea to get to a rock with a bunch of fur seals, the boat hardly pitched at all. On the other hand, apparently it snowed on the mountains around the fiord just last week. The guides on the boat kept encouraging us to take the picture quick because the clouds were expected to roll in at any moment, but they never did. The weather map shows a high pressure area parked in the Tasman Sea, just like it does on nice fall days in California. Doubtful Sound gets 220 days of rain per year so their apprehension is more urgent.
I was in front of two Americans on the bus who wouldn't shut up about all the extreme stuff they were going to do, skydiving and parabungeying and otherwise ignoring the landscape they were in. I could understand doing that in Las Vegas which is totally boring and nothing to look at but its prevalence in New Zealand seems hard to explain.
The fiord landscape is really pretty -- all these green steep mountains next to narrow waterways, covered with pine trees and tree ferns, at least up to the tree line.
On the way back there was a brief tour of the Manapouri power station, a hydroelectric station 220 meters underground. The bus drove down a winding 2 km road to get to the viewing platform above the machine room. We're all looking forward to the same tour of the Exxon National Wildlife Refuge Oil Refinery when the opportunity opens up. (The whole area was very nearly flooded for hydroelectric during the 1960's, but New Zealand had an opposition party at the time, something there isn't in America, and voted them in rather than eradicate the whole landscape. Bechtel had to redesign the power station to use a bit less gravitational acceleration. I'm sure that the next time it comes up, the World Bank will insist on a more efficent use of natural resources, judged by the only existing metric.)
