The day after Milford Sound we went on a trip to Doubtful Sound. All the same principles apply (fiord, not sound, black coral is white etc), but the trip was very different. We were up at 6.15 am ready to be collected by a bus from our campsite which was going to take us on a 30 minute ride to Manapouri. It was dark and raining. Our first boat trip was across Lake Manapouri which took about 45 minutes and was more like a river bus with plenty of seats for the 57 of us and free tea and coffee. At the end of that trip was a power station, of which more later, but here is a photo of our boat (the big one) with the only bit of the power station you can see above ground in the background.
Then we had to get on another bus to be driven along the most expensive road ever built (?) to take us across the Doubtful Sound. This unsealed road is said to have cost £1 per cm when it was built in 1963 to enable materials to be taken to the power station from the sea. Here is a view of Doubtful Sound from that road. It was one of those 'everyone must get off the bus now and take a photo' moments!
And here they all are not getting back on the bus!!
Once that 40 minutes bus ride was over we got on another boat which was going to take us around Doubtful Sound. This was another large boat and the captain and a guide gave us plenty of commentary. We went through the fiord and outto the Tasman sea which, we were told, was unusually calm. Again we had the best weather - it was raining on 'the other side' but not in the Sound. We were told it usually rains 8 meters a year! We saw more fur seals ( getting boring now) 
and two pairs of yellow crested penguins (apologies for the quality of this photo taken with my little camera)
and learned about tree avalanches. All the trees and plants cling to bear rock. When it has been very wet and windy a tree might fall at the top of a 'cliff' and in doing so tears up a large chunk of other trees and plants in the process - rather like peeling off wallpaper. The newly exposed rock then starts to 'green' again when lichens and moss start to grow and then seeds from trees germinate and it all starts again which you can see in the middle of this picture.
The trip on Doubtful Sound took about two hours, the most poignant of which was when the boat shut off its motors for a while and we were in complete silence. Very special. Then we got back on the bus to the power station. This time we went into the hydro electric power station which is almost all underground. The bus took us down a 1.5km tunnel to find this
Built by the NZ government in 1963 to provide power for the aluminium smelting plant in Bluff, on the south coast near Invercargill, this power station would provide 83% of the national power if it weren't powering the plant. It's all controlled remotely from Wellington on the North Island and 49% of it has just been sold off by the government. Sounds familiar! Graham will explain the technical bits if you are Interested. After this visit we boarded the boat tootsie us back to Manapouri and then another bus to take us back to Te Anau - exhausted.
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