Doubtful Sound and Queenstown
This is my fourth post from New Zealand’s South Island as part of the Adventures Abroad tour of this amazing country. In the first two we visited the Marlborough wine country, took a train ride through the Southern Alps, glimpsed Franz Josef glacier and took a jet boat up the Haast River before arriving in Queenstown for a day on our own. On that free day Alison and I chose to play golf at the Millbrook Resort in nearby Arrowtown. In this post we’ll take a closer look at Arrowtown and Queenstown before embarking on one of the great boat trips of all time to remote Doubtful Sound in Fiordland National Park. It promises to be another great day on this out of the world trip to New Zealand. Please come along for the ride.
It was two days ago that we took the back door entrance to Queenstown via the Crown Range Road, the highest in New Zealand. It was both exhilarating and a bit scary. You can see a video of our descent at the end of this post. We did not go directly into Queenstown, but rather stopped for an hour or so in the really interesting little community of Arrowtown which was founded in 1862 during the Otago gold rush. Everyone knows about the California, Klondike and Australian gold rushes, but until I got here, I had no idea that New Zealand had its own gold rush. Arrowtown has the look of a western town and is distinctly different from any other small town we visited in New Zealand. It’s a bit touristy, but nothing in comparison to its nearby neighbour Queenstown.
Queenstown
Queenstown is for certain the tourist capital of New Zealand and the one place that every tour operator to the country will include on their itinerary. It has a truly beautiful location on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, an 80 km. (50 mile) long glacier fed body of water that can compete with the likes of Lake Como and Constance for its photographic presence. It’s also very walkable with the core streets being pedestrian only or very vehicle limited.
It was founded by by this man, William Rees in 1863 who named it after the city of Queenstown in Ireland, which is somewhat ironic because the first thing the Irish did on gaining independence was renaming their Queenstown, Cobh. Apropos of nothing, Queenstown, Ireland was the last port of call of the Titanic. Three guesses as to what Rees did for a living.
Ok, that’s about all I’m going to say about Queenstown other than that the line up to get a Ferg Burger was ridiculous. If you love Banff, you’ll love Queenstown. If you prefer Jasper, as I do, well then…
Doubtful Sound
When we told friends who had been to New Zealand that we were headed there with Adventures Abroad they all said ” You’ll love Milford Sound” When we said we weren’t going to Milford Sound they were astonished and one went so far as to say we were getting ripped off. Today we are going to find out if that sentiment has any factual basis.
Fiordland National Park is world famous for its sounds. Say what? Not only do the Kiwis not know how to spell fjord, but they mix them up with sounds. A fjord is carved by glaciers while a sound, that looks very similar, is really an inlet of the sea.
Here is a map of Fiordland National Park with nary of fiord or fjord in sight. But there are lots of sounds with Milford at the top and Doubtful at the bottom.
To get to Milford Sound from Queenstown, where the majority of tours start, you need to drive almost four hours then get on a boat for a two hour cruise and then spend four more hours on the bus back to Queenstown. There are no less than 35 companies offering Milford Sound tours and you’ll be one of the million + tourists that visit it every year. It’s the New Zealand version of Ha Long Bay in Vietnam.
Doubtful Sound has one tourist operator, Real NZ and a tiny fraction of the visitors that Milford Sound gets. It’s moniker is ‘Sound of Silence’ because of its tranquility and the fact it’s not overrun with tour boats.
If you look at the map above you’ll see that getting to Doubtful Sound is very different from getting to Milford Sound. For the latter you drive right up to the landing docks on that four hour drive from Queenstown. For Doubtful Sound you skip the last two hours of the drive and get on a boat at Lake Manapouri which takes you to a landing spot where you take a bus over Wilmot Pass to the head of Doubtful Sound for a three hour cruise. Sound good?
In a country that has an oversupply of beautiful lakes, Lake Manapouri is considered by many to be the best of the best. It was used as the backdrop for a number of scenes from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and if the only thing we did today was cruise this lake I would be satisfied. Here is a small gallery of photos taken on the one hour + cruise from the small settlement of Manapouri to the end of South Arm where we got on a bus to take us over Wilmot Pass to Doubtful Sound. Double click to open a photo and double click again to enlarge.
The bus ride over Wilmot Pass has spectacular scenery in its own right.
The highlight is this stop at the crest where you get the first look at Doubtful Sound.
After a steep descent the bus arrives at Deep Cove where our boat the Patea Explorer is waiting for us. Patea is the Maori name for Doubtful Sound.
By now you might have noticed that this is an exceptionally calm and sunny day. We have, in fact, really lucked out as Doubtful Sound and the entire Fiordland area is one of the rainiest on the planet with up to 240 inches of rain a year. That’s well over ½ an inch a day on average.
Some facts about Doubtful Sound. First of all it’s not a sound, but a fjord, having been gouged out by glaciers. It was initially named Doubtful Harbour by Captain Cook in 1770 because he was hesitant to sail into it because of tricky winds – that won’t be an issue today. Later sailors dropped ‘harbour’ in favour of ‘sound’. It is the second longest fjord in Fiordland at 40 kms. (25 miles) and the deepest at 421 metres (1,381 feet). Its widest point is 2 kms. (1.2 miles). So let’s go on board and set sail, well motor actually.
This is a classic case of a picture being worth a thousand words. Here is a gallery of photos taken as we motored out to the mouth of Doubtful Sound. Note the total absence of other boats and the tranquility that makes this ‘The Sound of Silence’.
As we reach the mouth of Doubtful Sound and the Tasman Sea after 90 minutes of simply stunning vistas, the captain tells us that unlike most tours, the sea is calm enough that we can venture out into it. Apparently it is not unusual to find these rocks inundated by huge waves.
This is looking due south where the next stop is Antarctica.
And finally, I get my first albatross of this trip. This is Salvin’s Albatross, one of the few albatross species that is endemic to New Zealand.
As a birder, this sighting alone would make this trip worthwhile, but there’s much more to come as we head back into Doubtful Sound.
This is a small colony of fur seals on a tiny islet at the mouth of the fjord. They’re hard to see at first, but once you spot them you can see that they are all over the place. They are mostly pups with the parents foraging at sea, but quite safe as there are no land predators they need to worry about.
Further inside Doubtful Sound the captain points out this crayfish operation which is the only commercial fishing enterprise permitted in the area. While in North America crayfish are miniature versions of a lobster found in freshwater, in New Zealand they are the largest species of spiny lobster in the world. I was hoping to sample one while in New Zealand, but never saw them on any menu. Apparently they are so expensive that almost all are shipped to the Asian market.
The true end of Doubtful Sound is not at Deep Cove, but rather Hall Arm which has the highest cliffs and perhaps most dramatic scenery in the fjord.
This truly was a boat tour Alison and I will never forget and one of the best days we’ve ever had on an Adventures Abroad tour and that’s saying a lot.
One of the things I appreciated about this day is that when we docked back at Manapouri we did not have to drive two hours back to Queenstown, but just down the road to the Distinction Hotel in the small lakeside village of Te Anau.
We had a great meal at The Ranch Bar & Grill where I sampled these delicious lamb ribs. It was the perfect ending to a great day.
Tomorrow, alas, we must depart Fiordland and head back to the Pacific Coast and the city of Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula where more adventures await us. Hope to see you there.