Doubtful Sound

Up at 7:30, still snowing!!! Not sure how much snow fell, but I'm sure it's many inches.

Showered, breakfast, waited for bus, got here about 9:45, and picked up myself and a couple from Netherlands from our hostel.

A few km south of our hostel, towards Manapouri, no snow. Just rain. Weird!

People are saying that the weather on the other side of the mountain range is usually very different than what it is on this side. Yesterday, the Doubtful Sound trips got cancelled because of snow on the way up to the pass. The Netherlander couple were on that trip.

Anyway, we took the boat across Lake Manapouri to the power underground station. Lake Manapouri is 444 metres deep, second deepest in NZ. We did a quick tour of the power station. It's cool.

Way back (1960's) when they realized the potential of Lake Te Anau and Lake Manapouri to create power, the made a plans build a huge power station, causing the lake levels to rise dramatically, killing lots of shore vegetation and wreaking havoc on the environment. There was a HUGE public uproar, especially considering this was going to happen inside a national park. So, they went back to the drawing board, and drew up an underground power station that could harness the electricity making power of the lakes, but would also be able to keep the lake levels to within natural levels. So, at the west warm of Lake Manapouri, water gets sucked way down underneath the mountain, turning turbines, creating electricity, and the water is ejected out to Doubtful Sound via two 10km long tunnels blasted underneath the mountain. The turbines in the power station underneath the mountain are actually below sea level. It's way cool. The water levels of the two lakes is controlled, but the levels will never go outside the natural levels of the lakes. And the people rejoiced.

After the power station, we hopped on a bus, and started our climb up the mountain, snow, cold, low clouds hanging all over. Can't see much, it's not looking good.

As soon as we went over the pass, the whole picture changed. Almost no snow anywhere, at least two degrees warmer, just a thin layer of high cloud, all the mountains clearly visible. What a difference.

We then boarded another boat in Doubtful Sound. Doubtful is beautiful green, sheer cliffs dropping into the sea, waterfalls all over, deep fjords. We saw albatross, one penguin, lots of seals. Spent a few hours travelling all around the sound. Reminded me of the glacier tour we took in Alaska.

We got back to the frigid cold and now of the leeward side (is that the correct term?), and back to the hostel about 5:30, made supper (something simple, jam and peanut butter), then called and booked a hostel in Queenstown for Friday and Saturday nights. Lots of the hostels were booked up, finally got something at Southern Laughter Hostel, the 5th hostel I tried.

Side note: While we waited for our bus this morning, the hostel phoned to get the status of the Milford Road for some people that wanted to drive it today. It was closed, the road got one metre of snow and trees were down all over the road.