doubtful sound

We left our campsite at Lake Monowai this morning but apparently didn’t leave quite enough time to around sunrise, and saw a gorgeous sunrise over the valley on the way to the Real Journeys departure point on Lake Manapouri. There’s no public road access to Doubtful Sound, so you first have to take a ferry across the lake, then a bus to the sound. Our package included a tour of the underground, remotely-controlled hydropower plant, which was actually kind of interesting despite our expectations.

After the power station, we took a bus to another boat on the sounds. We saw the one that does the overnight trips, and it looked gorgeous – really too bad we weren’t able to swing that one! The sound was gorgeous, like Milford but with better weather today, fewer boats, and fewer waterfalls. We saw a pod of dolphins, some seals, and apparently we saw a Fiordland crested penguin but I’m not convinced that I did – at least I saw one at Milford!

I’m still not feeling great, allergies/sinuses, so I slept the whole way back across Lake Manapouri. In Manapouri (the town) we called up to see if we’d be able to do the Nevis bungy jump tomorrow. I’ve said I’m not leaving the country until I do a bungy jump and a skydive, but I’m terrified of bungy. I really wanted to do the skydive first to work up to bungy, but the best place to skydive is in Taupo on the N Island, and the Nevis is the tallest bungy and that’s in the S Island, and if I’m gonna do it I’m gonna do it big, so I guess I can’t do them in my preferred order. Anyway, the jump was booked for the times we would have preferred, which I originally took as a sign that we shouldn’t do it, but then I decided I’d be really mad at myself if I chickened out, so we decided we’d do a later time and just drive up the West Coast to the Wildfoods campground at night.

There weren’t any good DOC campsites near Queenstown, so we decided to head back to the one we camped at last night so we can try to catch the sunrise tomorrow to get a picture – we were running too late today for our cruise to get a shot!

When we got back to the campsite, we practiced for the bungy jump by jumping off little logs or just jumping forward on the path with our eyes closed – we both think that the jump itself, which you have to do yourself. I also decided to jump into the cold lake for practice. Then we went and Ann made her famous Tuna Surprise from her Peace Corps days – it was delicious! Not something that’s usually said about a food with ‘surprise’ in the name. Oh, and I made a real live fire - took about an hour with all the wet wood around, but I did it and it even got hot enough to cook some baked potatoes! I was feeling really tired tonight, so I went to bed after dinner while Ann socialized for a bit with the Aussies and Kiwis next site down.