The incredible Doubtful Sound

What a long but amazing day today has been. We camped on the last freedom camp spot available up until Milford Sound so we had a bit of a drive this morning to get to Manapouri where our Doubtful Sound trip commenced from. This meant a nice early wake up for us both and after saying goodbye to our chicken friend we were on our way. The first part of our tour was a boat ride across Lake Manapouri. This in itself was a beautiful trip with wonderful views around the lake. The gloomy weather added a level of mysteriousness to the mountinans and hills and I found myself almost continuously clicking away on the phone camera. After an hour or so we reached the end of the lake closest to the sound itself. Here they've utilised the power of the water and have built the largest water sourced power station in the country. Although this is great that they are harnessing renewable energy it did ruin the views and forest around a little bit! From this point we were collected by coach for a 45 minute journey to the boat. The driver was informative and pointed out many highlights and features along the way. Eventually we were on-board our vessel that was going to take us around the fiord. There was 32 of us which we were quite pleased about when the maximum they hold on one tour is 135. We had lots of space to move around the boat and the complimentary tea and coffee didn't have much of a line at all because there wasn't too many of us. I got talking to an American girl who I think by that point was on her 6th free coffee. She definitely would be having a cafdine crash right about now. The scenery was simply stunning and the mist rolling off the mountains made everything even more beautiful. I had Ed Sheeran's Misty Mountian song from the Hobbit stuck in my head pretty much the whole 3 hours we cruised around. Because of the recent rain lots of temporary waterfalls had appeared which ran like strands of hair down most mountain sides. When we reached the Tasman Sea at the end of the fiord we were treated to a great air show by some albatross who seemed to be using the boats waves to try and catch any disoritentated prey. One of the highlights of the cruise was when we pulled into a bay and the captain asked everyone to stand still and silent and then he proceeded to turn off the engines completely. We stood in complete silence just admiring the scenery around us. It was a very powerful moment to take that time to truly appreciate how lucky we are to be blessed with such a beautiful wonderful planet, something we take so for granted. I'm so in love with a quote which I think was said recently by the French pesidient; "there is no planet B". This definitely came to mind in that moment. After 3 hours of beauty we headed back to main land before the bus and boat journey took us back to Manapouri. We'd booked into a campsite only a minute up the road so we headed there and soon discovered it's way too small for the amount of business they attract. About 8 couples all squeezed into a tiny kitchen to cook and it was a battle to try and get our laundry done on the two machines available. It's been a long evening but we have managed to book ourselves onto a glow worm cave experience and a cruise around Milford Sound. It's going to be a busy couple of days and we're rather exhausted from today so it's definitely an early bed tonight.Read more