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The tour to Doubtful Sound took all day. There was a short bus ride from Te Anau to Manapouri; a boat from one end of Lake Manapouri to the other; another bus across Wilmot Pass to Doubtful Sound; the cruise through the sound to the sea; and then the whole thing in reverse. On the way back we stopped at the Manapouri Power Station.
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Lake Manapouri. |
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The deck of the boat. |
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A barge approaching the west end of the lake. |
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Passing the trailer that was on the barge. |
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A photo-op. |
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Waterfall and brown lichen. |
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The first glimpse of the sound, or fiord, or whatever. Not even the Internet has a coherent idea of the difference between the two. Someone on one of the tours decided that if it was made by glaciers it was a fiord, or by rivers, a sound. Therefore Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound are both fiords which have just always been called sounds. And "fiord" is the New Zealand spelling, not the Norway one. |
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The water was very calm. |
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At the point where the sound opened to the sea, a rock was visited by sea lions. |
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Even the Tasman Sea was calm. |
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A cave where fishermen store stuff, or stay. |
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A contented tourist. |
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The Manapouri Power Station, built by Bechtel, which supplies power for the aluminum smelter in Invercargill. (Between the smelter and the slaughterhouse, it didn't seem like there was much reason to go visit there). Bechtel wanted to raise the level of Lake Manapouri so there would have been more hydropower, but the residents of the town of Manapouri, which would have been flooded, objected. It sparked a huge flurry of New Zealand environmental activism which ultimately led to a change in government, and scuttled the plan to raise the lake. So they built the plant way underground -- the yellow in the model above is the 2.5 km-long tunnel to the plant. |
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The observation platform in the power plant. |
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The tops of the turbines. |
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The moon rising on the trip back across the lake. You're always aware on these trips of the moon getting lined up for its big number, here about three weeks away. |
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Back in Te Anau, we went to a small bird zoo, which was said to have one or two takahe, which are very rare. Unfortunately, they were hiding. This is a pukeko, a close relative. |
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They also had these great mushrooms. We didn't eat any. |
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There were several varieties of ducks. |
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This is a female paradise shelduck. |
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There were also a few parakeets. |
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