Fiordland is by far the largest of New Zealand’s fourteen national parks at 4,868 square miles. It is also by far the most inaccessible. It occupies the whole south western corner of New Zealand and there is just one main road that goes into the park. That is the Milford Road (SH 94). This reached the Homer Tunnel area in 1935, but it wasn’t until the tunnel was completed in 1953 that Milford Sound was accessible by road. This remains the only fiord in the national park with road access. In fact that can be debateable as well as the road has been shut the last few days because of heavy rain causing a high avalanche risk. This can happen frequently and it is the only road in New Zealand with its own dedicated road crew 365 days a year!
However, we weren’t going to Milford Sound today, but were heading for another of the fiords – Doubtful Sound. To get there we either had to book a trip or walk there. We chose the former for obvious reasons ….. The trip started from Lake Manapouri – twenty minutes drive from Te Anau. From there we took a half hour boat trip right across Lake Manapouri. We were then picked up by coaches and taken over the Wilmot Pass road. This is not connected to the main road network and was made to bring in the heavy equipment required to construct the hydro-electric power station on Lake Manapouri. It has the reputation of being the most expensive road ever built in New Zealand at $42 per centimetre (at current prices). The Wilmot Pass road ends in Deep Cove on Doubtful Sound and we joined our second boat there for a trip round the sound, though it is not technically a sound, but a fiord.
The views from the boat were immediately stunning as we left Deep Cove into the main fiord. Extensive waterfalls coming, in many cases, almost from the peaks to sea level were all around and the cliffs were crammed with vegetation despite the vertiginous drop into the sound. Photos can never do the views justice, partly due to fairly grey skies, but mainly because you are surrounded on all sides by mountains and the viewfinder can only focus on one small part of it.
We were actually really lucky with the weather. In contrast to the last couple of days, the rain held off and the cloud lifted and though the sun only shone intermittently, it meant we could appreciate fully the grandeur of the sound. In fact, it rains 200 days of the year here and there is a total of around seven metres of rain each year, so we were glad to only have a couple of millimetres worth of that total.
We headed out towards the Tasman Sea and just after the aptly named Shelter Islands we got into the incoming swell. The reason for this was to look at the local fur seal colony. The seals can dive up to 380 metres in depth which given that the sound is at its most 421 metres deep, means they can almost touch the bottom in most places. They can dive for up to 15 minutes at a time, but, luckily for us, they like lounging on rocks as well.
From there we headed across to another of the seaward islands to try and spot penguins. we didn’t manage penguins plural, but did manage penguin singular. A single lonely Fiordland Crested Penguin.
It was then time to turn round and retrace our steps ….. arriving back at Manapouri about 5.15pm.