Lake Manapouri

The night was freezing cold. I woke up at 3.30 am freezing like hell. I fell asleep before I had been fixing my hot-water bottle 🙄
As I need to get up at 5 am anyway I didn't go up to fix one then. Just put on my hoodie and an extra pair of socks and tried to sleep a bit more.
To get out of bed at 5 o'clock was not easy I can say. It was soo cold, but I had to get up, get dressed and eat breakfast to be in time for my coach drive to Lake Manapouri.

At 6 o'clock I left the campground and was outside the Go Orange Shop at 6.05 am. If I was there already yesterday to figure out, where I can park my car over the day without a problem and the said, I should be there around 6 am, definitely my later than 6.15 for the check-in.

I was at least not the first one. A girl from Ireland was already there and two more was showing up at 6.15.
But no one from Go Orange 🤔
We were standing there waiting and freezing, it is only 3 degrees 🥶🥶
At 6.25 our coach was arriving so we could finally get out of the cold.
It was only a 20 min drive to Pearl Harbor in Manapouri, we picked up 6 more people from their motels on the way as well.

In Pearl Harbor, we only had to wait a few minutes until it was time to get on the boat that will take us over Lake Manapouri to the end of the West Arm.
This part of the trip is operated by Real Journeys as they are the only boat operator on Lake Manapouri.
The cruise took around 45 minutes. The closer we come to West Arm, the more clouds were appearing around the mountains.
I hope, they are disappearing again before we reach Doubtful Sound 🤞🏼
After leaving the boat we got split up in two groups on two different coaches.
The first coach to leave was the coach with the Kayakers and shortly after them, it was our turn. The bus drive took around 45 minutes and we got a lot of information from our driver Scott.Read more