Leaving Wanaka early Thursday morning, we drove south through Queenstown to the small lakeside town of Manapouri on the edge of the Fiordland National Park. Fiordland is on the Southwestern corner of the South Island and is considered to be the most untouched and pristine wilderness in the country. We started our journey in Manapouri where we picked up a boat that took us across the lake to the Wilmot Pass where we took a bus into Fiordland. Interestingly, the road across the Wilmot Pass was the most expensive road ever built in New Zealand at the cost of $2 per centimeter, which for 22 kilometers is $4.4 million. While certainly expensive, what awaits on the other side is absolutely worth it.
Once we came through the Wilmot Pass, the view opens up onto Deep Cove, the inner most section of Doubtful Sound (top picture). Doubtful Sound, however, is actually a misnomer. When Captain Cook (remember him?) sailed by in 1770, he mistakenly believed that the region was composed of flooded river valleys- or sounds- and thus named Doubtful and Milford Sounds incorrectly. Rather, as Fiordland National Park perhaps suggests, this areas is not made of sounds but fjords- deep cuts in the earth caused by retreating glaciers and then flooded by rising sea levels. As an aside, the name "Doubtful" comes from the fact that Cook doubted that he could enter the fjord due to the rocks guarding its entrance. But enough on the etymology of Doubtful Sound.
We boarded the Fiordland Navigator (pictured above), and despite the wet weather, spent the afternoon enjoying our surroundings. Fiordland gets about 5-7 meters of rain each year, so the rain is a little hard to avoid, but the weather did clear later in the afternoon. We went out in a tender craft to get close to the shoreline, we saw dolphins and seals, and we watched the sun go down on the Tasman Sea. After dinner in the evening, we attended a presentation on the ecological history of Fiordland, which was insightful and entertaining. We met some new friends from New Zealand, we played board games, and getting to be in such a immaculate wilderness was thrilling.
We spent the night on the boat, and in the morning, we returned to Deep Cove to begin our return journey. All in all, the fjords were spectacular (like New Zealand generally), and I'm not sure how you would get to see them up close to appreciate their grandeur unless you did what we did. The region is beautifully preserved, and let's hope that it remains that way for others to enjoy. Our next stop was Queenstown, the high adventure destination of New Zealand.
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