Well, technology just keeps getting better, I am proud to announce an oestreich.org first - embedded video (I can't edit the video however, so give it until at least 18 seconds in). While I was busy with the technical innovations Melissa wrote this post.
After the excitement of Queenstown, we headed off to the southwestern corner of New Zealand, known as the Fiordlands. This is an area that is very sparsely populated, but completely majestic with craggy mountains and cliffs surrounding long, fingerlike bays known as "sounds". Milford Sound is the area that attracts the most tourists, but after a little poking around we discovered that Doubtful Sound is vaster, more rugged, and less clogged with people. Rich worked his internet voodoo and found us a highly rated overnight cruise, a yacht run by a company known as Deep Cove. The yacht sleeps a total of twelve guests, but we were lucky enough that only three other people had signed up for the cruise with us.
Doubtful Sound was named by Captain Cook when he chose not to enter the bay because it was "doubtful" his ships would make it out, but new roads make the area easier to access. We started by spending the night in nearby Manapouri, a tiny town named for the nearby Manapouri Lake. Our motel was like something out of the 1950s, complete with a flowered bedspread and a hotplate. There were two food options in Manapouri, one of which was a bar attached to our motel, so we headed to nearby Te Anau to get some grub.
The next morning we made our way down to the dock in Manapouri to catch a boat that would take us across Lake Manapouri to the van that would take us up and down a winding mountain road to Doubtful Sound. There was another cruise trip that was joining us on the ferry across Lake Manapouri--it turns out another company runs cruises that hold roughly 70 passengers. We met the other passengers that would be on our yacht, two older ladies from England and their private tourguide, a schoolteacher from the North Island of New Zealand that runs tours as well. When the ferry docked, we met the captain of the cruise we were to take, John, an extremely genial Kiwi. He packed us into a van and drove us to the sound, stopping several times to allow the ladies to take pictures of various waterfalls and telling us about the local flora and fauna. He also told us the story of the road crews that had to build the highway to Doubtful Sound, and pointed out some of the amusing road signs they had erected. There were some signs that are supposed to say "CAUTION! ICE!" They had printed up one sign so it said "CAUTION! mICE!" and another that said "CAUTION! spICE girls!"
The ship itself was gorgeous and incredibly spacious for just the five of us passengers, John the captain, and Tracy the deckhand and chef. We set out on the trip, and as Tracey set out a lunch of crayfish tails and salad (crayfish are like lobster, but do not have the large front claws of lobsters), John steered us under waterfalls and close to various islands so we could get a closer look at birds and so we could look for other wildlife. After we demolished the lunch, John spotted a group of kayakers (boy, did these guys look cold) and he pulled up next to the kayaking guide and bribed her with some cookies to tell us whether she had seen any dolphins in the area. She pointed us in the right direction, and we motored over to join a pod of dolphins, who were in a playful mood and jumped around us and surfed in our wake for a while. Rich got some great video of the dolphins. In the meantime, we saw waterfall after waterfall and a total of six rainbows. We pulled into some shallower water to fish for our dinner. I caught a perch for bait and a baby blue cod that we threw back. Rich caught some large blue code that we ended up keeping for dinner.
Later that night we caught sight of a seal sunning itself on a tiny island, so John manuevered us near and we clapped at it so it would notice us, but it couldn't be bothered to sit up and just waved its flipper at us languidly. A couple of hours after that, John's eagle eye caught a tiny ripple on the surface of the water that turned out to be a young seal behaving oddly. He pulled us up to it and we climbed to the stern of the boat to quietly watch the seal wash itself. It twisted and turned in the water for a few minutes, then seemed to notice the five of us standing about four feet from him, and it slowly swam off. John also pointed out the tiny head of a blue penguin swimming away from us, and brought us close to the mouth of the sound so we could interact with some albatross. Apparently you generally need to go quite far into the ocean to see the albatross, but when we saw one and pulled up close to it and tossed it some of our leftover fish parts, we were suddenly surrounded by about ten albatross, two different species, and several young.
We pulled back into the sheltered part of the sound to weigh anchor for the night. Tracey made us a dinner of cod fillets fried with lemon garlic breadcrumbs and venison that was hunted locally (I think by John). Our cabin was endearingly compact, and we slept well. Before hitting the bunk, we ventured onto deck to see the stars so clear that we could see the smudge of brightness across the sky that is the Milky Way.
The next morning we woke before dawn and started heading back across the sound to the dock. Rich got a chance to steer the boat. We were sad to leave Tracey at the dock, and John drove us back across to Lake Manapouri, where we would catch the ferry. We have only five more days in New Zealand, which we will spend traveling up the West Coast exploring small towns and the glaciers at Franz Josef.
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