Just at the time I was accepted to go to Korea ("They'd like you by the end of the month.") Dad found places for my sister Sasscat and me on a week-long boating trip in Doubtful Sound, due to some cancellations. I figured that, though it'd cut severely into my already rushed preparations, it'd a) give me time to relax, b) give me time to study my Teach Yourself Korean book, and c) be a hugely wonderful experience any which way.
So on Saturday morning we waited for our car-pool passenger, JP, and left. 45 minutes from Christchurch, Dad realised he'd forgotten his video camera. We rang Mum and got her to meet us half-way back into town, then we bought lunch, and left again. The rest of the drive passed more or less uneventfully: south to the Mt Cook lookout, which we photographed during a lovely sunset. Note that Mt Cook isn't actually visible in this photo; it rarely is.
Then south some more to Franklin (near Queenstown), and then to Manapouri, where we stayed the night in a cabin at a motel. Next morning we had breakfast next door and then drove down to the lake to load all our gear onto the boat that would take us across Lake Manapouri. On the other side, we'd load all our gear onto a bus that would take us over the pass to Doubtful Sound. At which point we'd load all our gear onto the Sandpiper, our home for the next week.
Right: The black dot at the bottom of the lake-mass is Manapouri; the part of the lake to the left of it is Lake Manapouri. The splodge of red to the left of that is the bus track to the fiord which is Doubtful Sound.
Below: The Sandpiper
And Doubtful Sound itself....
This first view shows a gully that would have been formed from a tributary to the glaciers that formed these fjords. Note the steep sides; Doubtful Sound is surrounded by land like this, covered in rainforest. How do the trees grow on near-sheer rock (because there's certainly next to no soil there)? First, algae grows on the rock. The moss grows on the algae. There are lots of types of mosses, some of them very fluffy. Once they're fluffy enough, ferns will grow. Once the ferns are large enough, some scrubby bush-type things grow; then some trees -- the roots interlock and support each other. At some point the trees grow too big and heavy and a few acres of rainforest will slip straight down into the fiord, but that's not a problem; the algae just starts growing again.
On the other hand, you need a reasonable amount of water. Fiordland has on average an inch of rain a day. Kilometre-high waterfalls every few hundred metres....
Here's one of the dolphins that played with the Sandpiper on our first afternoon out. We also saw some seals, but my camera wasn't quick enough for them.
A rare photo of my father! Dad in wet weather gear with one of the fish we caught. They were delicious, though we had to keep picking out bones because we ran out of daylight to fillet them in.
Dad, Frank and JP also went diving (that was the main reason for the trip) while Sass and I mostly stayed dry aboard. However, on Tuesday 19th June, just two days before the shortest of the years, we did go one at a time for a brief swim in swimming togs and polyprops. A very brief swim. Sass went first; I could see she was hyperventilating so tried to get her to calm down. Once she came out, I went next. And found out why she was hyperventilating. Try as I might, there was simply no way to get my breathing back to normal until I was out of the water again; incidentally, this was well within a minute.
On one of our three trips ashore, in Caswell Sound: Rimu trees, native to New Zealand; they and the native beech make up a large part of the rainforest in Fiordland.
A fern growing out of one of hundreds of species of "fluffy moss".
Looking up from under a ponga tree. Some people in New Zealand have fences made of ponga trunks, with the occasional live tree to spruce it up.
A generic mountain view....
...and a generic sunset. (You can see the mooring rope leading off the tree.)
The mirror-like clarity of reflections from the surface:
Finally, my favourite photo of all, showcasing some of the many shades of grey we saw in Doubtful Sound; click on the photo for a larger view.
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Email me if you could tell that the "mirror-like" photo (NZFI12.jpg) was upside-down.